Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a derog. epithet aimed at those who wear spectacles.

1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 8 Apr. 2/4: Mrs B—n [...] wishes to know what she has done to offend Mr L—s, the four-eyed swell of Pitt-street.
1878		A.F. Mulford Fighting Indians 102: [They] referred to me as Four-Eyed-Son-of-a-Gun.
1895		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 3 Aug. 1/6: What has become of the four-eyed cadger of Bullocky flat.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 66: The four-eyed nobs dat sent me out on t’er Sout’ Side.
1897		Kipling ‘Slaves of the Lamp — Part I’ in Complete Stalky & Co. (1987) 66: Yiss, yeou, yeou long-nosed, fower-eyed, gingy-whiskered beggar!
1907		C.E. Mulford Bar-20 ix: That there four-eyed cuss looks at it and snickers.
1911		S. Ford Torchy 137: And him the mildest lookin’ four-eyed gent ever let loose.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 281: You sem to know a lot for a four-eyed man. Ain’t a tiggy, are you?
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘White-when-he’s-wanted’ in Three Elephant Power 49: A hard-headed old Scotchman known as ‘four-eyed M’Gregor’, because he wore spectacles.
1925		G.H. Mullin Adventures of a Scholar Tramp 211: Ye can’t soldier on us, ye four-eyed son of a bitch.
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 177: Look at that gink out there, the four-eyed one.
1939		Wodehouse Uncle Fred in the Springtime 28: ‘[T]he shirking, skrimshanking, four-eyed young son of a what-not’.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 168: There is no way to kid that four-eyed little son-of-a-bitch.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 508: You damn four-eyed fool.
1959		A. Sillitoe ‘Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 24: That’s what the four-eyed white-smocked bloke with the notebook couldn’t understand.
1965		G. Melly Owning Up (1974) 205: A four-eyed short-arse, which makes its nest in old New Statesmans.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 215: If you want to go off with that four-eyed egghead see’f I care.
1983		S. King Christine 339: Buddy had been this way ever since Moochie Welch, that little four-eyes panhandling dork, got run down by some psycho on JFK Drive.
1989		N. George ‘Boy Talk’ in Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos (1994) 129: I was a four-eyed bookworm.
1991		Age (Melbourne) 11 June 13/2: A list of epithets gathered from parliament during the last year: piece of garbage [...] orangutan [...] poofter [...] yapping yahoo [...] four-eyed ape, skink [...] gutter dingo.
1993		I. Welsh Trainspotting 83: Ah half expected to see beggars at the freshers ball, beating tae a pulp some four-eyed, middle-class wanker he imagined wis starin at um.
1999		T. Fontana and S. Nayar ‘Secret Identities’ Oz ser. 3 ep. 7 [TV script] If I’m invulnerable [...] why would I disguise myself as a four-eyed wimp?
2005		B. Hare Urban Grimshaw 80: The specky, four-eyed, perverted, smelly nonce.
2013		J. Stahl Happy Mutant Baby Pills 122: This isn’t some four-eyed old man in a station toilet we’re talking about.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘Can you get hold of that four-eyed dill’.
2021		P Howard Braywatch 34: ‘You four-eyed freak’.