looking glass
Americannoun
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a mirror made of glass with a metallic or amalgam backing.
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the glass used in a mirror.
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anything used as a mirror, as highly polished metal or a reflecting surface.
noun
adjective
Etymology
Origin of looking glass
First recorded in 1520–30
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.
In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," Alice runs endlessly alongside the Red Queen but never moves ahead.
From Science Daily • Jan. 26, 2026
Lewis Carroll based the chessboard landscape of Alice Through the Looking-Glass on the watery Oxfordshire moorland that extends in all directions.
From The Guardian • Feb. 10, 2019
In “Wonder/Through the Looking-Glass Houses,” the transgender choreographer Arrie Davidson and her troupe, KineticArchitecture Dance Theater, use characters and imagery from Carroll’s tales to explore the shifting, peculiar thing known as identity.
From New York Times • Dec. 1, 2016
For example, the names of the snooty talking flowers in Looking-Glass parody the then-popular 1855 poem 'Come into the garden, Maud', and the fashionable 'language of flowers' for lovers.
From Nature • Nov. 15, 2016
Michael, not thinking it very prudent to remind Lonsdale of last night's encounter with Appleby, examined the copy of The Oxford Looking-Glass that lay beside his plate.
From Sinister Street, vol. 2 by MacKenzie, Compton
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.
