Word.ws English Dictionary

look over one's shoulder

look over one's shoulder verb: to check obsessively out of excessive caution or fear of a perceived danger.

Verb

look over one's shoulder (third-person singular simple present looks over one's shoulder, present participle looking over one's shoulder, simple past and past participle looked over one's shoulder)

  1. (idiomatic) To check obsessively out of excessive caution or fear of a perceived danger.
    • This is a cutthroat industry. You have to constantly look over your shoulder.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see look, over, shoulder.
    • Once I visited the Kings Cross office on an extremely foggy day and about 3.45 I was looking over the shoulder of the Section Controller for the Kings Cross-Finsbury Park stretch.1962 May, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 343
    • Nick walked over and touched the brass knob, looked over his shoulder as if Judah may be watching from the doorway.2021, Michael Farris Smith, chapter 28, in Nick, New York; Boston; London: Little, Brown and Company, page 150

Forms of look over one's shoulder

third-person singular presentlooks over one's shoulder
present participlelooking over one's shoulder
past participlelooked over one's shoulder
pastlooked over one's shoulder

Questions about look over one's shoulder

What does look over one's shoulder mean?
Look over one's shoulder means to check obsessively out of excessive caution or fear of a perceived danger.
What part of speech is look over one's shoulder?
Look over one's shoulder is a verb.
What is the past tense of look over one's shoulder?
The past tense of look over one's shoulder is looked over one's shoulder.

Words near look over one's shoulder in the dictionary

  1. look one's best
  2. look out
  3. look out for number one
  4. look out for someone
  5. look over
  6. look over one's shoulder
  7. look past
  8. look past the end of one's nose
  9. look past the tip of one's nose
  10. look right through
  11. look round

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look over one's shoulder (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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