looker-on
Americannoun
Other Word 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.
“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
Many a Protestant looker-on was expected, if only to hear Tenor John McCormack, Papal Count, sing the Panis Angelicus of C�sar Franck.
From Time Magazine Archive
There was no paint or powder, false hair, or strengthened eyebrows, and she therefore seemed like a looker-on on the boards of a theatre where all the others were dressed up to act parts.
From The Gentleman Cadet His Career and Adventures at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich by Drayson, A.W.
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.
