Word.ws English Dictionary

looking for trouble

looking for trouble is the present participle and gerund of look for trouble.

Meaning of look for trouble

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.

Questions about looking for trouble

What is looking for trouble the present participle and gerund of?
Looking for trouble is the present participle and gerund of look for trouble.

Words near looking for trouble in the dictionary

  1. looking down one's nose
  2. looking down upon
  3. looking for
  4. looking for a dog to kick
  5. looking for number one
  6. looking for trouble
  7. looking forward
  8. looking forward to
  9. looking glass
  10. looking glasses
  11. looking in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: looking for trouble (page history and authors); 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.

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