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eye candy

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From eye +‎ candy. Early-1980’s US TV and advertising jargon,[1] perhaps influenced by earlier nose candy (“cocaine”).

Noun

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eye candy (uncountable)

  1. A very attractive person or persons, or the salient visible physical attributes thereof.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:beautiful person
    Antonyms: see Thesaurus:ugly person
    Hypernym: head-turner
    I'm going to the beach to check out some eye candy.
    • 1980, Geoffrey Cowan, See No Evil, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 309:
      But despite his claims that NBC would become “the class act,” not all of [Fred] Silverman's changes seemed aimed in direction of excellence. Unfortunately his rationale for eschewing exploitative “eye candy” seemed to apply to more serious sex-related ventures as well.
    • 2025 December 16, “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich”, in The New York Times Magazine‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
      In 1986, Schubach hired a petite 23-year-old named Patricia Schmidt to be his assistant. She told us that her main job was to be “eye candy,” but her other duties included answering the phones. That put her in regular contact with Epstein.
      (Can we archive this URL?)
  2. (by extension) Any object or sight with considerable visual appeal.
    Synonym: feast for the eyes
    • 2007, Maximum PC, number Winter, page 3:
      DirectX 10 promises an almost obscene step up in the level of eye candy you can expect from an A-list game, which is the great news. The bad news is, you'll need a new videocard to get those gorgeous graphics.
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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “eye candy”, in Google Books Ngram Viewer.
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