A study examined the different strategies used by speakers of Egyptian Arabic to ward off the potential effects of the evil eye, specifically the responding strategies to compliments perceived as invocations of evil as it relates to the gender of the recipient of the compliment and the social context in which the compliment takes place. Social context was defined as the social distance between interlocutors, small or large. Subjects were 40 (25 males, 15 females) Egyptian teachers of English-as-a-Second Language attending a teacher training program in the United States, only one of whom claimed not to believe in the evil eye. An open-ended discourse-completion interview; including 12 situations, was conducted with each subject in colloquial Egyptian Arabic in his or her own residence. The resulting 480 compliment responses obtained were analyzed for strategy type. The most common was complaining about the object of the compliment. Other frequently-used strategies included complimenting the speaker, evasion, and humor. The relationship of gender and social distance in the use of each of these strategies, and the apparent intent of the strategies, were analyzed. A list of formula phrases related to beliefs about the evil eye and the 12 test situations are appended. (Contains 22 references and 2 figures.) (MSE)