look black

1. Appear threatening or unfavorable, as in The future looked black for Henry after he dropped out of school. This expression employs black in the sense of “boding ill,” a usage dating from about 1700. Also see under dirty look.

Example Sentences

In fact, its lack of diversity has been a punchline, like when Colin Jost on “Saturday Night Live’s” “Weekend Update” said, “For those of you too young to remember, ‘Frasier’ was the show that made ‘Friends’ look Black.”

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His eyes look black too, and empty.

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The banks of fir trees below almost look black.

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“At times, there was shame that I wanted to be white,” the author said, “other times there was the shame that I want to look Black.”

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Indeed, this unusual, unaccredited little college in the middle of rural nowhere has been the subject of at least 10 full-length books and several poetry collections, and is a perennial topic of museum exhibitions — see, recently, “Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957,” organized by the Los Angeles-based writer and curator Helen Molesworth in 2016.

Read more on New York Times

Related Words

• glare 
• glower 
• grimace 
• pout