to examine, esp cursorily
he looked through his notes before the lecture
(intr, preposition) to ignore (a person) deliberately
whenever he meets his ex-girlfriend, she looks straight through him
First recorded in 1935–40
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“There has been enough of an inflationary impulse in the system to have closed the window for central banks to simply look through the shock,” said Paul Hollingsworth, an economist at BNP Paribas.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 30, 2026
The Fed’s instinct is to look through oil shocks such as that caused by the Iran war, Powell said, since energy prices tend to spike and then quickly reverse.
From Barron's • Apr. 29, 2026
Central banks’ first course of action when supply shocks hit is to look through them, given monetary policy’s limited effect in these scenarios.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 24, 2026
They are willing to look through software’s pain because the mega-caps are doing enough lifting.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 17, 2026
And he praises Cremonini, who had refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
