Word.ws English Dictionary

look off

look off verb: to put off by one's facial expression.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To put off by one's facial expression
    • She can look a man on or look him off, either way. I wouldn't have thought any woman could look him off, I'd think she'd need a hatpin or a red-hot poker1957, Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept, page 40
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To mislead by directing one's apparent attention away from one's true object of intent.
    • I went back to pass, tried to look off the safety, turned and fired it out to Jack. It didn't work. The safety closed on the ball and knocked it down.2004, Danny Wuerffel with Steve Spurrier and Mike Bianchi, Danny Wuerffel's Tales from the Gator Swamp, page 24
  3. (intransitive) To look in a way different than the intended direction of play in order to confuse the opposing team.

Forms of look off

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

Questions about look off

What does look off mean?
Look off means to put off by one's facial expression.
What part of speech is look off?
Look off is a verb.
What is the past tense of look off?
The past tense of look off is looked off.

Words near look off in the dictionary

  1. look like something the cat's dragged in
  2. look like who did it and ran
  3. look like who did it and ran away
  4. look lively
  5. look Ma, no hands
  6. look off
  7. look on
  8. look on as
  9. look on the black side
  10. look on the bright side
  11. look on the bright side of it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look off (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 off.ogg.

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