Word.ws English Dictionary

look alive

look alive verb: to get busy; start acting or moving.

Verb

look alive (third-person singular simple present looks alive, present participle looking alive, simple past and past participle looked alive)

  1. (imperative) To get busy; start acting or moving.
    • They'd better look alive when the boss is passing by.
    Synonyms:
    look lively

Interjection

look alive

  1. Heads up! (Look out!)
    • Look alive! The boss is coming.
    Synonyms:
    look lively, avast [⇒ thesaurus]!, beware!, blackfriars!, cave!, cheese it!, heads up!, hey up!, hist!, look alive!

Synonyms of look alive

  • look lively
  • avast [⇒ thesaurus]!
  • beware!
  • blackfriars!
  • cave!
  • cheese it!
  • heads up!
  • hey up!
  • hist!
  • look alive!
9 more synonymsFewer synonyms
  • look lively!
  • look out!
  • look sharp!
  • mind out!
  • namous!
  • take care!
  • ware!
  • watch it!
  • watch out!

Forms of look alive

third-person singular presentlooks alive
present participlelooking alive
past participlelooked alive
pastlooked alive

Questions about look alive

What does look alive mean?
Look alive means to get busy; start acting or moving.
What part of speech is look alive?
Look alive can be a verb or an interjection.
What is the past tense of look alive?
The past tense of look alive is looked alive.

Words near look alive in the dictionary

  1. look after
  2. look ahead
  3. look ahead to
  4. look ahere
  5. look alike
  6. look alive
  7. look and feel
  8. look and feels
  9. look around
  10. look as if one had lost a shilling and found sixpence
  11. look as if one has been dragged through a hedge backwards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look alive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “look alive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/look_alive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.