Word.ws English Dictionary

looks down on

looks down on is the third-person singular simple present indicative of look down on.

Meaning of look down on

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To regard or treat as inferior.
    • He remembers feeling that people looked down on him, and, ‘realising I was rubbish at academic stuff’, he decided he'd join a circus.2009 September 25, Michael Deacon, “Ross Noble: interview”, in Telegraph.co.uk
  2. (transitive) To view from a vantage point.
    • High up on the viaduct, and approached by a spidery staircase from the street, it looks down on Southwark Cathedral.1948 March and April, “A Keypoint in an Intensive Service”, in Railway Magazine, page 115
  3. (idiomatic, transitive) To view [people or events on Earth] from the vantage point of the afterlife (originally, Heaven).
    • I get a feeling Kurt Cobain is looking down on Nickelback and wondering what alternative rock has become.

Questions about looks down on

What is looks down on the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Looks down on is the third-person singular simple present indicative of look down on.

Words near looks down on in the dictionary

  1. looks before one leaps
  2. looks beyond
  3. looks can be deceiving
  4. looks daggers
  5. looks down
  6. looks down on
  7. looks down one's nose
  8. looks down upon
  9. looks for
  10. looks for a dog to kick
  11. looks for number one

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: looks down on (page history and authors); look down on (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: “looks down on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/looks_down_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.