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Evil Eye

Folklore
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A curse delivered through a malevolent glare, believed to cause misfortune, illness, or death, often countered with amulets or rituals.

Detailed Definition
Evil Eye in poetry symbolizes the violence of envy and the unseen harm of judgment. It appears in folk and Mediterranean-inspired verse as a metaphor for social cruelty—where gaze becomes weapon, and the innocent are wounded by mere attention.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the evil eye is invoked: “Look, how he looks! / The eye of the witch is in his face”; in Keats’ “Isabella,” the lover’s gaze becomes a curse: “Her eyes were like the evil eye of night”; in Coleridge’s “Christabel,” Geraldine’s stare paralyzes like the evil eye of old lore; in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” the mirror’s reflection is a cursed eye that dooms her; in William Blake’s “The Human Abstract,” the “Evil Eye” is personified as a shadow that grows from envy; in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh,” the evil eye is the gaze of society that crushes the artist.
Additional Notes
Evil Eye is a curse delivered through a malevolent glare, believed to cause illness, misfortune, or death—common across Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian folk traditions. It is not intentional malice but envy’s invisible poison. In poetry, it symbolizes the destructive power of gaze, societal judgment, or the weight of perception. Amulets like the nazar are often invoked as counter-images—ideal for poems on visibility, objectification, or the burden of being seen.
Also Known As
Malocchio Bad Eye
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