Word.ws English Dictionary

look down upon

look down upon is the alternative form of look down on.

Meaning of look down on

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To regard or treat as inferior.
    • He remembers feeling that people looked down on him, and, ‘realising I was rubbish at academic stuff’, he decided he'd join a circus.2009 September 25, Michael Deacon, “Ross Noble: interview”, in Telegraph.co.uk
  2. (transitive) To view from a vantage point.
    • High up on the viaduct, and approached by a spidery staircase from the street, it looks down on Southwark Cathedral.1948 March and April, “A Keypoint in an Intensive Service”, in Railway Magazine, page 115
  3. (idiomatic, transitive) To view [people or events on Earth] from the vantage point of the afterlife (originally, Heaven).
    • I get a feeling Kurt Cobain is looking down on Nickelback and wondering what alternative rock has become.

Forms of look down upon

third-person singular presentlooks down upon
present participlelooking down upon
past participlelooked down upon
pastlooked down upon

Questions about look down upon

What is look down upon the alternative form of?
Look down upon is the alternative form of look down on.

Words near look down upon in the dictionary

  1. look dev
  2. look development
  3. look down
  4. look down on
  5. look down one's nose
  6. look down upon
  7. look for
  8. look for a dog to kick
  9. look for number one
  10. look for trouble
  11. look forward to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look down upon (page history and authors); look down on (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-look down upon.ogg.

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