burn it into your brows

In the British TV miniseries "Paranoid", a team of detectives are investigating the murder of a local resident. They have a suspect but can't find the murder weapon. At the morning briefing, the supervising officer gives instructions to the team:

"Now, boy scouts and girl scouts, burn it into your brows. I want that weapon."

Is the part in bold an idiom meaning something like "make it a priority/focus on that"? I couldn't find anything similar on the internet, so I might have misheard it.

I've never heard that phrase before. I would take it to mean either "Make it a priority" or "Concentrate on looking for the weapon". I said the latter purely because your brow is the area directly above your eyes. I think that's a very tenuous link, though.

It might be a phrase the writer just made up and liked the sound of it, or you could have misheard it. Can you provide a link to the relevant clip?

emsr2d2 said:

Can you provide a link to the relevant clip?

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I'm afraid I can't. I watched the episode on HBO Max last night.

I've never heard anything similar to this, either. I suppose it means something like 'take a mental photograph of it, so that you will easily recognise it if you come across it'.

Sometimes the murder weapon is never found. Why is that? Well, the perp doesn't want to be connected to the murder weapon so they dispose of it.

Just because you are told to do something that doesn't mean you can do it.

I too have never run across this exact phrase, but the obvious guess is that it's a variation on "burn this into your brains". What else could it be?

probus said:

I too have never run across this exact phrase…

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I three have never run across this exact phrase…!

emsr2d2 said:

Can you provide a link to the relevant clip?

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A link to the script of Paranoid, the British TV miniseries, will take us to a clickbait site. Suffice it to say that the OP shared an accurate quotation by one of the main characters.

probus said:

… the obvious guess is that it's a variation on "burn this into your brains". What else could it be?

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In my neck of the woods, the dialogue variation would be “burn this into your memory”.

kilroy65 said:

In the British TV miniseries "Paranoid", a team of detectives are investigating the murder of a local resident.

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Shouldn’t the word “are” be “is” in the OP? “… a team of detectives is investigating the murder of a local resident.”

Amigos4 said:

Shouldn’t the word “are” be “is” in the OP? “… a team of detectives is investigating the murder of a local resident.”

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Either is possible with collective nouns. Speakers of AmE probably prefer the singular form of the verb.

I think it is like 'mark it well'. At least I know a very close phrase in Russian and it is translated into English as 'mark it well'

I suppose it must be some sort of reference to furrowing your brow in concentration.