Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. one who stares.

a.1619

Beaumont & Fletcher Knight of Malta V ii: Do you stare, goggles?

2. (also gogglers, gogler) usu. pl., the eyes; occas. in sing., the pupil of the eye (see cit. 1705).

1637		N. Whiting Albino and Bellama 106: The wakened Porter [...] Fixed his goggles on his youthfull face.
1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 124: Æneas in a peck of troubles / Began to twinckle with his goggles.
1705		E. Hickeringill Priest-Craft IV (1716) 227: If when I would persuade them if I should turn up my Eyes, ’till the black Pupil be lost under the Upper Eye-lid, and nothing but the pious Goggle, and innocent White appears.
1710		British Apollo III No. 96. 2/1: A Bird of Night, whose dim Goggles cou’d not bear the Rays of the Sun .
a.1719		J. Byron ‘Dissection of a Beau’s Head’ in Misc. Poems (1814) I 25: Those muscles, in English, wherewith a man ogles, When on a fair lady he fixes his goggles .
1786		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Ode Upon Ode’ Works (1794) I 411: Giving her two expressive gogglers [...] A fierce, broad, wild, fix’d, furious, threat’ning stare?
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821–6		‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 326: I always thought your goggles were in better shape [...] not to know an old shipmate in a second.
1823		Devizes & Wilts. Gaz. 21 Aug. 3/4: Sampson [...] hit poor Aby on the left goggle [...] Aby came up with an eye ‘that was scarce fit,’ as Josh said, ‘to bait a mouse trap’.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 5 Sept. 3/1: Tom getting home on the left goggle, and Tipton on the mouth.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 5 Dec. 4/2: Brummy [...] receiving it heavily on the conk and gogler.
1861		R.H. Newell Orpheus C. Kerr I 20: I gave Bob some happy evidences of youthful Christianity around his goggles and pooty soon he looked as ef he’d been brought up to the charocal business.
1889		Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA) 9 July 3/6: Prize Ring Slang [...] ‘goggles,’ ‘ogles,’ ‘peepers,’ ‘squinters,’ the eyes.
1896		‘’Arry on Blues & Bluestockings’ Punch 21 Mar. 135/2: Does she think that a ’Varsity Don is a similar species of fowl, / As big and as bleared in the goggles, as blind to the true time o’ day?
1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 133: He mimicked Danny walking along [...] with his goggles stuck in the box scores.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 44: The cheet [i.e. a dummy] was disgusting: dead opals, chattering fangs, googly gendarme goggles [...] black famblers.

3. spectacles, esp. when round.

1802		Sporting Mag. Feb. XIX 298/2: The Little Green Man, who delighteth to stare / So fierce thro’ his goggles of green.
1824		National Advocate (N.Y.) 22 May 2/2: The Tom and Jerry’s are all in training – big whiskers – top boots – new curricles – green frocks – crop tail ponies – Clinton hats – shammey gloves and goggles.
1834		T. Hood ‘Tylney Hall’ Works (1862) III 215: He’ll have to sport goggles afore he’s twenty-one.
1843		N.Y. Daily Trib. 9 Nov. 2/3: Reward of Merit. [headline] 1. A Leather Medal each – very thick and solid. . . . [to some voters]. A pair of horn goggles – regular dead-eyes – [to other voters].
1871		L.H. Bagg Four Years at Yale 45: Giglamps and goggles, eye-glasses.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Apr. 2/4: The inane expression is too perfect, and that the ‘goggles’ are if anything a trifle too prononceés.
1882		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 14 July 7/3: My beard [...] had grown again, and with a pair of black goggles [...] made sure Polly would not know me.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn 19: Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on.
1894		Pall Mall Gaz. 4 July 3/2: ’Ere’s a tec. D’yer dick his goggles and ’is blanky daisies.
1898		Boy’s Own Paper 8 Oct. 25: I say, you with the goggles, get your hair cut.
1903		J. Conrad Typhoon 201: We could get rid of them and their money afterwards by delivering them to their Mandarin or Taotai, or whatever they call these chaps in goggles you see being carried about in sedan-chairs through their stinking streets.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 136: He had put on some coca-nut fibre whiskers an’ a pair o’ blue goggles.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 129: There’s a ponderous pundit MacHugh / Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
1930		R. Whitfield Green Ice (1988) 17: I could find the driver [...] the one with the mustache and goggles.
1940		O. Strange Sudden Takes the Trail 11: The grey-blue eyes behind the goggles surveyed him sardonically.
1955		E. Hunter Blackboard Jungle 201: They looked at Edwards sitting at his desk [...] looked at his goddam goggles perched on his nose.
1960		A. Burgess Right to an Answer (1978) 48: His eyes were blindfolded by the strip-lighting caught in his goggles.
1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 194: Sam sighed and pushed his fashionable, heavy, steel rimmed goggles up on his nose.
1981		J. Wambaugh Glitter Dome (1982) 225: He had [...] tinted glasses. Big wire-rimmed goggles.
1999		Observer Rev. 26 Sept. 3: The pontiff legged it with my goggles.

4. (also gogle) in sing., a monocle.

c.1850

Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict. n.p.: Flashing his gogle sporting his eyeglass.

5. the nickname of someone who wears spectacles.

1908		C. Rook London Side-Lights 123: Opposite was the young man in spectacles. Goggles I called him.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 161: She took up with ‘Goggles,’ an auto thief. He had only one eye.
1957		G. Kersh Fowlers End (2001) 299: I grazed the chin of the man immediately behind him, who, because he wore glasses, was nicknamed ‘Goggles’.