the.com/bullseye
The one spot on the target that turns luck into a story about skill.
means The exact center of a target — or, by extension, a shot, guess, or answer that hits precisely right.
from From 'bull's eye,' a literal term dating to the 1600s for a small, round, eye-like object — first applied to things like a small round window or a thick glass lump of a lantern lens, which resembled the eye of a bull. Archery and shooting ranges later borrowed the word for the small central disc of a target, since it looked like one of these small round 'eyes' set into a larger surface. From there it leapt happily into metaphor, so that any dead-on answer, joke, or decision can now 'hit the bullseye.'
- origin
- named for an actual ox eye, small and dark
- archery value
- usually worth 9 or 10 points
- dartboard myth
- center ring, not the whole board, is the real bullseye
- figurative use
- means exactly right, zero margin for error