Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

squint at

phraseB2Not compared — the two pools are counted one word at a time, so a phrase has no score

To squint at something is to screw your eyes up while looking at it. Against the sun, or at print too small to read.

The narrowing actually helps, since it reduces the amount of stray light entering the eye and sharpens the image, which is why people do it instinctively before they get glasses. It takes a direct object after at. Squinting into the distance and squinting at a screen are the two commonest uses. The separate medical noun a squint means eyes that do not align, which is a quite different thing.

Definitions of squint at

  1. 1phrasesquint atTo look at something with partly closed eyes.B2

    “She had to squint at the label in the poor light.”

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Looking

First appears in chapter 29 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word