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.
That you can, at the end of the day, you look back at this piece of wood you’d be working on and go, “There we are, I did that.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
Before Zandvoort signs off, we take a look back at a selection of images from the Dutch Grand Prix, which was first run as an F1 event in 1952.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
To reach the common ancestor shared by the plant and animal kingdoms, Anderson says researchers must look back to around 1.6 billion years ago.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 2026
I think many people will look back and think about all the time they spent on social media feeds and how this time could have been used in so much better ways.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
Halfway across, I look back to see we are all in.
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
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.
