Word: look Part of Speech: verb Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-West Germanic *lōkōn Old English lōcian Middle English loken English look From Middle English loken, lokien, from Old English lōcian, from Proto-West Germanic *lōkōn. Further origin unknown, no certain cognates outside Germanic. Cognate with Scots luke, luik, leuk (“to look, see”), West Frisian lôkje, loaitsje (“to look”), Dutch loeken (“to look”), German Low German löken. Likely also related to German lugen (“to peek”), Alemannic German luege (“to look”), Yiddish לוגן (lugn). Pronunciation: /lʊk/, [lɵk], /luːk/, [luːx], /lʉk/ 1. To try to see, to pay attention to with one’s eyes. Labels: intransitive Example: They kept looking at me. Example: Don’t look in the closet. 2. To try to see, to pay attention to with one’s eyes. Labels: colloquial, transitive Example: Look what you did to him! Example: Look who's back! 3. To appear, to seem. Example: It looks as if it’s going to rain soon. or It looks like it’s going to rain soon. or It looks like rain [is coming]. Example: Our new boss looks to be friendly. 4. To give an appearance of being. Labels: copulative Example: That painting looks nice. Example: You’re looking worried. Whaddya thinking about? 5. To search for, to try to find. Labels: intransitive, often 6. To face or present a view. Example: The hotel looks over the valleys of the Hindu Kush. Example: 1769, Benjamin Blayney (editor), King James Bible, Oxford standard text, Ezekiel, xi, 1, Moreover the spirit lifted me up, and brought me unto the east gate of the LORD's house, which looketh eastward: 7. To expect or anticipate. Example: I look to each hour for my lover’s arrival. Example: 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book VI, Canto XI, 1750, The Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 4, page 139, 8. To express or manifest by a look. Labels: transitive Example: Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, Example: For a few seconds Mr Carlyle looked his unutterable feelings. When he did speak it was with crushing deliberation. 9. To make sure of, to see to. Labels: often, transitive Example: "Look to it yourself, father," answered Telemachus, "for they say you are the wisest counsellor in the world, and that there is no other mortal man who can compare with you.[…] 10. To show oneself in looking; to peep out. Labels: dated, figuratively, sometimes Example: I have[…]more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather. 11. To check, to make sure (of something). Labels: archaic, dialectal, transitive Example: Finding it was like to overblow, we took in our Sprit-ſail, and ſtood by to hand the Fore-ſail; but making foul Weather, we look'd the Guns were all faſt, and handed the Miſſen. 12. To look at; to turn the eyes toward. Labels: obsolete, transitive Example: Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes.[…]She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now,[…]. 13. To seek; to search for. Labels: obsolete, transitive Example: c. 1552–1599, Edmund Spenser, unidentified sonnet, Looking my love, I go from place to place, Like a young fawn that late hath lost the hind; And seek each where, where last I saw her face, Whose image yet I carry fresh in mind. 14. To influence, overawe, or subdue by looks or presence. Labels: obsolete, transitive Example: to look down opposition Example: 1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes the Spartan Hero, a Tragedy, Act 3, Scene 1, 1701, The Comedies, Tragedies, and Operas Written by John Dryden, Esq, Volume 2, page 464, A Spirit fit to start into an Empire, And look the World to Law. 15. To look at a pitch as a batter without swinging at it. Example: The fastball caught him looking. Example: Clem Labine struck Mays out looking at his last at bat.