Word.ws English Dictionary

look shy

look shy verb: to cast a suspicious glance on or at somebody; to mistrust.

Verb

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

  1. To cast a suspicious glance on or at somebody; to mistrust.
    • The very Courtiers looked shy at it.1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution
    • ‘How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you with a bad conscience and en empty pocket?’1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book I, chapter 6

Forms of look shy

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

Questions about look shy

What does look shy mean?
Look shy means to cast a suspicious glance on or at somebody; to mistrust.
What part of speech is look shy?
Look shy is a verb.
What is the past tense of look shy?
The past tense of look shy is looked shy.

Words near look shy in the dictionary

  1. look past the end of one's nose
  2. look past the tip of one's nose
  3. look right through
  4. look round
  5. look sharp
  6. look shy
  7. look snappy
  8. look the other way
  9. look the part
  10. look through
  11. look through one's fingers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: look shy (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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