Other forms: looking, looked, looks
To look is to turn your eyes towards something on purpose. You look at a photo, look out of the window, look both ways before you cross.
Look also means to seem: you look tired, that looks expensive, it looks like rain. The noun is the act itself — have a look, take a quick look — and also an appearance or a style: the look of the place, a hurt look, this season's look. The trap is look, see and watch. You look AT something deliberately, you see it whether you meant to or not, and you watch something that moves, for a while. Note the AT: look at me, never look me. And the phrasal verbs are everywhere — look after (take care of), look for (try to find), look up (find in a list), look forward to (be glad it is coming).
1verblookTo turn your eyes towards something deliberately.~48%
“She looked at the ceiling and thought about it.”
2verbseemTo seem or appear a certain way.~16%
“You look tired — sit down for a minute.”
3nounactAn act of turning your eyes towards something.~2%
“Have a look at this before you send it.”
4nounappearanceThe appearance or style of somebody or something.~32%
“The kitchen has a completely different look since they painted it.”
5nounexpressionAn expression on somebody's face.~2%
“He gave me a look that ended the conversation.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Look is homegrown and, unusually, a dead end. Old English lōcian gave Middle English loken, from Proto-West Germanic *lōkōn, and past the Germanic languages the trail simply stops — no certain relative anywhere else. Dutch had loeken and Low German löken, and German lugen, to peek, is probably in the family.
Middle English
loken
English, today
look
Built from
From Middle English loken. 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”), gsw luege (“to look”), Yiddish לוגן.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA