Etymology From 14th century Middle English gogelen (“to roll (eyes), to look sideways”). Earlier source is unknown. The noun is attested from the 17th century. Compare Irish gog (“a nod, a slight motion”).
1
To stare (at something) with wide eyes.
[...] she frowned a displeased frown and told me for heaven's sake to stop goggling like a dead halibut. [...] She left me fogged and groping for the inner meaning, and I could see from Aunt Dahlia's goggling eyes that the basic idea hadn't got across with her either. [...] I didn't want to be hampered by an audience. When you're pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “IV, XII, AND XV”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
the rational pleas of astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) for the public to trust science and understand the seriousness of the coming disaster will sound uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has goggled in disbelief at COVID and/or vaccine denialism.2021 December 7, Jesse Hassenger, “Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence cope with disaster in the despairing satire Don’t Look Up”, in AV Club:
2
To roll the eyes.
Inflam’d all over with Disgrace, / To be seen by her in such a Place; / Which made him hang his Head, and scoul, / And wink, and goggle like an Owl1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, page 108:
Etymology From 14th century Middle English gogelen (“to roll (eyes), to look sideways”). Earlier source is unknown. The noun is attested from the 17th century. Compare Irish gog (“a nod, a slight motion”).