[Grammar] ..tightly shut or what do it mean?

[emsr2d2]

I'm not sure I'd even say that someone's eyes peeled open. The only context I can think of for that is if they were somehow sort of stuck shut - for example, sometimes you wake up in the morning and there's loads of gunk in your eyes. You might have to peel them open in that situation. Otherwise, it's not natural in BrE. In addition, I wouldn't say that their eyes were peeled open (passive). I'd say they peeled them open (active).

That aside, even if you had to peel them open, once they're open they're just open. The person would just be keeping their eyes open, not keeping them peeled open.

 

[Phaedrus]

Well, for the sake of the grammatical point, let's change the past participle to taped or pried:

The torturer kept Peter's eyes taped wide open.
The doctor kept Peter's eyes pried wide open.

Consider the attached image, from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Wouldn't you say that somebody is keeping the protagonist's eyes pried (wide) open?

We could even use the passive: His eyes are being kept pried wide open.

 

[jutfrank]

I basically agree with emsr2d2 on the peeled open issue. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say Keep your eyed peeled open or even use peeled open adjectivally in any other way. For that reason, it sounds wrong to me.

Is it okay in AmE, then?

 

[jutfrank]

Wouldn't you say that somebody is keeping the protagonist's eyes pried (wide) open?

We could even use the passive: His eyes are being kept pried wide open.

Yes, that's a good example.

 

[emsr2d2]

I consider "pry" to be a single event. Someone pried his eyes open. After that, they're being kept taped open.

 

[GoesStation]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say Keep your eyed peeled open or even use peeled open adjectivally in any other way. For that reason, it sounds wrong to me.

Is it okay in AmE, then?

No. It sounds rather horrible to me.

 

[jutfrank]

I consider "pry" to be a single event. Someone pried his eyes open.

Yes, but in Phaedrus' example, pried is an adjective, not a verb. In other words, it's not an event—it's the state in which Peter's eyes are kept.

 

[Phaedrus]

Yes, but in Phaedrus' example, pried is an adjective, not a verb. In other words, it's not an event—it's the state in which Peter's eyes are kept.

Yes, the point of these additional examples is to show that, even if we wish to discard the past participle screwed, in the OP's example, as semantically irrelevant to the main idea (Peter, whether or not he may be said to have engaged in something called "screwing," kept his eyes shut -- indeed, tightly shut), the past participle in grammatically parallel examples will not always be so easy to discard.

Sometimes, not surprisingly, the head of the type of phrase in question is semantically relevant to what the phrase is expressing. Ems may dislike "pried" in reference to the photo from A Clockwork Orange, but other candidates are available: stapled, stretched, clipped, pressed. The idea is that this guy's eyes are not just being kept open; they are being kept open forcibly, from without, in a manner whose nature can be expressed by a past participle.

 

[emsr2d2]

I agree that all of those alternatives work fine. It was "pried" I had a problem with. You can only pry someone's eyes open once; after that, to keep them open you have to do something else. The only continuous form I can see working would be "He kept prying Matt's eyes open", and that would only work if, every time they were pried open, Matt screwed his eyes shut again.