Ears
.About one’s ears. Causing trouble. The allusion is to a house falling on one, or a hornet’s nest buzzing about one’s head.
¶ If your ears burn, people say some one is talking of you. This is very old, for Pliny says, “When our ears do glow and tingle, some do talk of us in our absence.” Shakespeare, in Much Ado About Nothing (iii. 1), makes Beatrice say, when Urʹsula and Hero had been talking of her, “What fire is in mine ears?” Sir Thomas Browne ascribes this conceit to the superstition of guardian angels, who touch the right ear if the talk is favourable, and the left if otherwise. This is done to cheer or warn.
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Mine ears hast thou bored. Thou hast accepted me as thy bond-slave for life. If a Hebrew servant declined to go free after six yearsʹ service, the master was to bring him to the doorpost, and bore his ear through with an awl, in token of his voluntary servitude. (Exod. xxi. 6.)
Over head and ears (in love, in debt, etc.). Wholly, desperately.
“He is over head and ears in love with the maid. He loves her better than his own life.”—Terence in English.
To give’s one’s ears [to obtain an object]. To make a considerable sacrifice for the purpose. The allusion is to the ancient practice of cutting off the ears of those who loved their own offensive opinions better than their ears.
To have itching ears. Loving to hear news or current gossip. (2 Tim. iv. 3.)
To prick up one’s ears. To listen attentively to something not expected, as horses prick up their ears at a sudden sound.
“At which, like unbacked colts, they pricked their ears.”
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To set people together by the ears. To create ill-will among them; to set them quarrelling and pulling each other’s ears.
“When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears.”
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Walls have ears. Things uttered in secret get rumoured abroad. Chaucer says, “That field hath eyen, and the wood hath ears.” (Canterbury Tales, v. 1,524.)
