looker-on
Americannoun
plural
lookers-onEtymology
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
"Christ, oh Christ . . . the King's horse!" cried a looker-on.
From Time Magazine Archive
The first trial that he suffered might seem light enough to an outside looker-on, but it was heavy enough to Valentine.
From The Haunted Homestead A Novel by Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
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.
