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
If churches filled to overflowing be proof of national piety, then are the people pious: and farther than this, no looker-on such as myself should, I think, attempt to go.
From Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Vol. 1 of 2) by Frances Milton Trollope
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Despite all the prestige, money, and adoring lookers-on, at a certain point altruism no longer represents any kind of long-term strategy.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
But the gallant officer faced all this, to the delight of the lookers-on, and he was quite happy and contented, for no accident beyond the occasional breaking of a pole took place.
From George Alfred Henty The Story of an Active Life by George Manville Fenn
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.
