boiledlooking eyes

[kahroba]

Dear friends
As far as I know "boiled" means, among other definitions, "intoxiated, drunk" but I'm not sure if that definition applies here in the "following context" taken from "Margo Dowling" in "The Big Money" by Dos Passos:

She and Jerry never saw each other at the theater; early in the game she'd told him she had no intention of letting her life interfere with her work and he'd looked sharply at her with his shrewd boiledlooking eyes and said, "Humph... I wish more of our young ladies felt like you do. ... I spend most of my time combing them out of my hair."

Could it mean "indecent or lewd"?

 

[Thomas Tompion]

Good morning, Karoba. I'd take it as meaning that they looked as though they had been boiled, perhaps colourless and watery.

 

[ewie]

And I'd take it to mean enlarged ~ I assume eyeballs would expand if one boiled them.

But no, I certainly wouldn't think indecent/lewd, Mr.K.

 

[Nunty]

Take with the "sharp" look and the shrewdness, I wonder if it has anything to do "hardboiled", tough.

 

[ewie]

Funny you should say that, Nunty, because the image it's conjuring up for me is that of eyes that look like hard-boiled ... eggs. (Without the shells on.) Yes, seriously.

 

[Thomas Tompion]

Me too. I felt a bit of a contrast between the boiledlooking eyes and the shrewdness, as though it was part of his shrewdness to look dumb, like Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment.