ball one's eyes out

This is horribly common as a substitute for bawl one’s eyes out. Has bawl  become an unfamiliar word? Do we not bawl as much as we used to? The initial meaning of the word is ‘to bark or howl like a dog’ which is essentially the meaning of the Latin word baulare from which it came.  From there the meaning moves to ‘making a loud noise’, in particular to making a loud noise while crying. Have we changed the image behind the phrase from a person making animal sounds while weeping, to someone rubbing their knuckles in their eyeballs?

 In the phrase bawl one’s eyes out, the bit about the eyes is a dramatic intensifier. 

I think we are more or less happy with bawl  meaning ‘to cry vigorously’ but we are less happy with the meaning ‘to make a loud noise’, so that when we come to the expression to bawl someone out, that is to make a very loud noise in remonstration, we don’t see the connection. The solution has been to replace bawl with a word that sounds exactly the same and, who knows, might mean something.  We ball someone out. Working backwards we now are more comfortable with balling our eyes out – after all our eyes are like two balls – than we are with bawling them out.