Word.ws English Dictionary

look for trouble

look for trouble verb: to deliberately act in a way that's likely to lead to a fight.

Verb

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

  1. (informal) to deliberately act in a way that's likely to lead to a fight.
    • When they showed up, you could tell they were looking for trouble
  2. (informal) to do things that are likely to cause problems.
    • If you cut corners on maintenance now, you're just looking for trouble later on.

Forms of look for trouble

third-person singular presentlooks for trouble
present participlelooking for trouble
past participlelooked for trouble
pastlooked for trouble

Questions about look for trouble

What does look for trouble mean?
Look for trouble means to deliberately act in a way that's likely to lead to a fight.
What part of speech is look for trouble?
Look for trouble is a verb.
What is the past tense of look for trouble?
The past tense of look for trouble is looked for trouble.

Words near look for trouble in the dictionary

  1. look down one's nose
  2. look down upon
  3. look for
  4. look for a dog to kick
  5. look for number one
  6. look for trouble
  7. look forward to
  8. look fun
  9. look funn
  10. look here
  11. look in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look for trouble (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.

Last updated:

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