look

look

1. non-standard uses.

There are various idiomatic uses of look that are confined to particular parts of the English-speaking world and are not part of standard English: for example look you as a way of attracting attention, found in Shakespeare

• (Why, look you, how you storm! —The Merchant of Venice i.iii.140)

and still used in Wales, looky here (an AmE variant of look here), and the colloquial AmE (20c) form lookit used with the meaning ‘Look!’ or ‘Listen!’.

2. look + to-infinitive.

• I shall hereafter look to be treated as a person of respectability —T. Huxley, 1900.

This type, meaning ‘to expect’, has been in continuous use since the 16c but is beginning to sound dated and is falling into disuse. Still in regular use is a form of this in which the continuous tense is used (am looking, etc.) and the sense is more of hope or intention than of expectation:

• The home team will be looking to get a result against the visitors next Saturday —Times, 1988

• The council had been looking to take ownership of the historic Moat for a number of years —Kildare Nationalist, 2003.

In a third type, look + to-infinitive means ‘to look as if, to appear’:

• The owl looked to be encircled by six cloaked hitmen —J. E. Maslow, 1982.

Although there is a theoretical risk of ambiguity here, this does not seem to occur in practice.

3. look + adverbs and adjectives.

The meaning we are concerned with here is ‘appear, seem’. Uses with an adverb complement (as in Shakespeare's The skies looke grimly) are now virtually extinct. A possible exception is the phrase to look well (= to appear to be in good health), but even here well is virtually an adjective. Uses with adjectives are normal, as in to look black, blue, cold, elderly, foolish, small, stupid, etc.

4. look like + clause

• You look to me…like you was made out of old wichetty grubs —Patrick White, AusE 1961

• Looks like your child's birthday is news again this year —Guardian, 1973

• Katherine now looked like she wanted to throw her plate at Sammy —fiction website, AmE 2003.

For this construction, see like 1.