looker-on
Americannoun
-
lookers-on
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of looker-on
1530–40; look on + -er 1
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.
See Examples For:
“I am by nature a looker-on rather than a taker-part.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2017
When he arrived in Paris, in the seventeen-forties, at the age of thirty, he was a deracinated looker-on, struggling with complex feelings of envy, fascination, revulsion, and rejection provoked by a self-absorbed élite.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 25, 2016
"Are you her," asks a looker-on, "or are you the drill?"
From The Guardian ● Aug. 13, 2011
"Christ, oh Christ . . . the King's horse!" cried a looker-on.
From Time Magazine Archive
Only the landlady, with her apron rolled round her arms, stood grim and silent; a looker-on whose taciturnity presently irritated Nadin beyond bearing.
From Starvecrow Farm by Stanley J. Weyman
A large crowd of amateur photographers, space enthusiasts and assorted lookers-on watched the lift-off from an adjoining beach.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 31, 2022
This is the way a meme ends: its nihilism co-opted into earnestness by embarrassingly sincere lookers-on not online enough to know better, and trying too hard.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 9, 2022
His swearing in was turned to spectacle, complete with throngs of adoring lookers-on, invocations of the divine, and a gun salute.
From Time ● Jan. 13, 2017
Despite all the prestige, money, and adoring lookers-on, at a certain point altruism no longer represents any kind of long-term strategy.
From Slate ● Oct. 20, 2014
The boy and his monkey joined in the performance of certain simple, amusing tricks to elicit money from the lookers-on.
From Equatorial America Descriptive of a Visit to St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbadoes, and the Principal Capitals of South America by Maturin Murray Ballou
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.
