look out

present singular third person looks out · participle present looking out · participle past looked out · past looked out

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo be vigilant and aware often as an imperative to alert a person to danger.

   While you're in the city center, look out for the dodgy street vendors.

   2 more examples

   Thinks I to myself, “Sol, you're run off your course again. This is a rich man's summer‘cottage’ and if you don't look out there's likely to be some nice, lively dog taking an interest in your underpinning.”

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

   From a peanut whistle to a cannon's roar/When Fibber runs to open that closet door/Look out! [clattering sounds]

   1942, Eddie House, Billy Mills, “The Sound Effects Man”

   Synonyms: take care, watch out

2. idiomatictransitiveTo find by looking: to hunt out.

   I had not seen her since long before the war, and I had to look out her address in the telephone-book.

   1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 58”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   Morgan pulled a Greek lexicon toward him (he used a Greek-German), to look out a word, instead of asking it of Pemberton.

   1891, Henry James, The Pupil^(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Lesson_of_the_Master,_The_Marriages,_The_Pupil,_Brooksmith,_The_Solution,_Sir_Edmund_Orme_(New_York_%26_London:_Macmillan_%26_Co.,_1892)/The_Pupil/Chapter_5), page 144

   Then she straightened the kitchen, lit the lamp, mended the fire, looked out the washing for the next day, and put it to soak.

   1913, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Penguin, published 2006, page 14

3. To be facing.

   A spacious room that looks out on the sea.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see look, out.

   On the morning of the eighth day, he found himself looking out across the river.

   2021, Michael Farris Smith, chapter 30, in Nick, New York; Boston; London: Little, Brown and Company, page 159

5. abbreviationellipsisinformalintransitiveEllipsis of look out for (someone)

   Hey man, I know it costs four dollars but I only have three. Can you please look out?