look back
Britishverb
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to cast one's mind to the past
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to become increasingly successful
after his book was published, he never looked back
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to pay another visit later
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Remember or think about the past, as in When Mom looked back on the early days of their marriage, she wondered how they'd managed with so little money . [Late 1500s]
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not look back ; never look back . Never show signs of interrupted progress, never return to past circumstances. For example, Once he'd won the Pulitzer Prize, he never looked back . [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"They are people like us, we look at them, they look back at you across 2,000 years," he said.
From Barron's ● Nov. 3, 2026
If we look back for one year at REITs’ dividend payments, no members of this S&P 500 industry group pass this cut recommended by Altfest.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 29, 2026
"Because if you look back at the performers we had in the last four years, they all started somewhere before they got to the world's biggest stage."
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026
“When we look back at this time,” he said, “I think we’ll realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026
I would live the future he had been deprived of, and I wouldn’t look back.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
