Word.ws English Dictionary

looking off

looking off is the present participle and gerund of look off.

Meaning of look off

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.

Questions about looking off

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

Words near looking off in the dictionary

  1. looking like something the cat dragged in
  2. looking like something the cat's dragged in
  3. looking like who did it and ran
  4. looking like who did it and ran away
  5. looking lively
  6. looking off
  7. looking on
  8. looking on as
  9. looking on the black side
  10. looking on the bright side
  11. looking on the bright side of it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: looking off (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “looking off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/looking_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.