Green’s Dictionary of Slang

black eye n.

a bad reputation; a blow to one’s reputation .

1744		Cibber Another Occas. Letter to Mr P[ope] 8: If you had not been a blinder Booby than myself, you would have sate down quietly with the last black Eye I gave you .
1795		Mass. Spy 18 Feb. n.p.: Massachusetts beaten; and a black eye for Connecticut.
1842		Comic Almanack Sept. 327: Black Eyes and Blue Jackets.
1888		N.Y. Mercury 15 Jan. in Ware (1909) 32/2: [heading] A black eye for Platt. — An Albany jury has decided that Governor Hill was right and Quarantine Commissioner Platt wrong [...].
1896		St Paul Dly Globe (MN) 20 Jan. 6/1: Duluth has received a black eye and has hurt her reputation to no slight extent among the devotees of the roarin’ game.
1908		A.N. Lyons Arthur’s 295: He had been hailed by a congenial spirit, one ’Erry the Nark, a chronic sufferer from black-eye.
1917		Topeka State Jrnl (KS) 10 Dec. 7/1: [headline] Kansas Must Not Fail Now. It Would Give a Black Eye to Reputation of State.
1921		Wash. Herald (DC) 28 Sept. 4/4: He gets the minimal penalty [...] thereby saving his reputation a black eye.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1935		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Judgement Day in Studs Lonigan (1936) 588: The Order and the Church, too, would get a black eye from this.
1969		C. Himes Blind Man with a Pistol (1971) 98: It might not bother you two tough customers [...] but it’s a black eye for me.
1977		(con. 1969) M. Herr Dispatches 42: Those men called dead Vietnamese ‘believers,’ a lost American platoon was a ‘black eye’.
1994		Mollen Report 72: ’[T]he 77th Precinct [corruption] case was a black eye for the Department’.

In phrases

give someone/something a black eye (v.) (also black-eye)

to injure someone’s or something’s reputation.

1813		J. Orrok Letter 1 Oct. (1927) 167: The young folks gave the Jelly and Jam a black eye [OED].
1888		Greenville Times (MS) 28 Jan. 2/2: It has given the town a veritable black eye, materially and in reputation.
1896		Gold Leaf Volume Henderson, NC) 15 May 3/3: Such conduct gives the place a black eye — a bad reputation abroad.
1904		Lafayette Advertiser (LA) 26 Oct. 5/3: It would give her such a black eye and doubtful reputation among the people.
1907		W.M. Raine Bucky O’Connor (1910) 90: Help us to get safely from the country whose reputation you black-eye so cheerfully.
1913		J. London Valley of the Moon (1914) 208: It will give the strike a black eye, especially if Henderson croaks.
1917		Van Loan ‘A Morning Workout’ in Old Man Curry 204: If we should try and fall down it would give the track a black eye. The sucker horsemen would be leery of us.
1918		R. Lardner Treat ’Em Rough 51: Capt. Nash might [...] shut us both up in the guard house together and one or the other of us wouldn’t never come out alive and which ever one it was it would give the camp a black eye.
1922		E.E. Cummings Enormous Room (1928) 85: I don’t put you on a car together. I’m ashamed to do it, that’s why. I doughwanta give this section a black eye.
1927		D. Hammett ‘$106,000 Blood Money’ Story Omnibus (1966) 355: We would have had the nasty choice between letting him go free or giving the Agency a black eye by advertising the fact that one of our operatives was a crook.
1943		I. Wolfert Tucker’s People (1944) 183: I’ve seen three or four of these guys come in as special prosecutor in my time and give a black eye to the department.
1958		R. Prather Scrambled Yeggs 15: The mounting number of hit-and-run deaths that was helping to give L.A. a black eye with the National Safety Council.
1960		Wodehouse Jeeves in the Offing 120: Nothing gives a big beano a black eye more surely than the failure to show up of the principal speaker.

SE in slang uses

In phrases

give (a bottle) a black eye (v.)

to finish it; note cit. 1830.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Black Eye. we gave the Bottle a black Eye, i.e. drank it almost up.
c.1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1798		Sporting Mag. July XII 194/2: As big as it [i.e. a tankard] is, I warrant the first draught I give it a black eye, and so I did.
1830		N.Y. Daily Sentinel 14 Apr. 2/5: Three Blockheads . . . agreed to drink off a quantity of punch. [One] gives it a black eye, as it is called, or drank until the surface of the liquor touched the opposite edge of the bottom.