dot the eye with the fists... What does it mean? Context: Up until now, most of us accepted ourselves without any examination. We did not know who we were, or whence we came, but if anyone dared to c

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dot the eye with the fists... What does it mean? Context: Up until now, most of us accepted ourselves without any examination. We did not know who we were, or whence we came, but if anyone dared to challenge the pseudo-reality of our existence, we had recourse to a game of dotting the challenger's eyes with the fists, and followed this by asking the educated recipient for the identity of the person who dotted his eyes. This is a little trick known as parrying a question with a question. We accept much. We like to call it faith. But faith is a carry-over from the trusting days of childhood when we had no alternative to trust. Want is meant by "dotting the challenger's eyes with the fists"? Does it mean to beat? And what all this part of sentence mean? "...but if anyone dared to challenge the pseudo-reality of our existence, we had recourse to a game of dotting the challenger's eyes with the fists, and followed this by asking the educated recipient for the identity of the person who dotted his eyes." Thank you!

Nov 9, 2014 9:07 PM

Answers · 6

This is a very eloquent way of saying that you punch the other person's lights out. "To dot the i's (and cross the t's)" means that you do the work carefully and thoroughly - every detail is taken care of. "Eyes" and "i's" sounds exactly the same, so "a game of dotting the challenger's eyes with the fists" means you don't offer a logical argument, but just swing your fists instead. The resulting "black eyes" are quite large dots, too! The part that says, "and followed this by asking the educated recipient for the identity of the person who dotted his eyes" is a little less clear. You'd either be shouting "WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?" or re-enacting the "WHAT'S MY NAME?" scene from Shaft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf10j3s5Tfc "This is a little trick known as parrying a question with a question" ...and this is where I burst out laughing. :D None of these sentences are standard expressions, but we understand them based on references to other expressions.

November 10, 2014

I've never heard of "dotting eyes with fists". If the author has made up this expression, then he is not helping much! My best guess is that the author is explaining the meaning of the expression when he says "parrying a question with a question" i.e. avoiding answering a question by asking another question. Perhaps this is analagous to moving one's fists over someone's eyes quickly to confuse him or her. This is only my guess of the original sense of "dotting eyes with fists". Perhaps this expression comes from another language that the author knows and it more accurately explains his meaning than any natural English expression.

November 9, 2014

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