Meaning
Having more significance, complexity, or hidden detail than is apparent at first glance. Said of people, situations, agreements, or works of art whose surface appearance understates what is really going on beneath it. Neutral; widely used in everyday speech, journalism, and criticism to signal hidden depth or motive. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The formula descends from Milton's line 'more is meant than meets the ear' in Il Penseroso, published in his 1645 Poems, and eighteenth-century writers quoting it still used the ear form. The earliest eye version traced by Word Histories is from 1757, in Memoirs concerning the City of Dublin, praising beauty that holds more than meets the eye of a careless observer; it was repeated in John Upton's edition of Spenser (1758) and in reviews and letters through the 1770s, usually in discussions of allegory and hidden meaning. In the late twentieth century the phrase gained mass-culture currency through the Transformers franchise, whose 1984 animated pilot miniseries was retroactively titled 'More Than Meets the Eye'. A nineteenth-century origin date is therefore too late: the eye form is documented from the 1750s with a 1645 antecedent.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- far more than meets the eye
- more than meets the ear
- more to it than meets the eye
- there's more than meets the eye
Usage Examples
- The quiet accountant turned out to be a champion fencer; there was more to him than met the eye.
- Analysts warn that the merger's cheerful press release hides more than meets the eye.
- That old cottage has more than meets the eye, including a wine cellar beneath the kitchen.