Word.ws English Dictionary

on the outside, looking in

on the outside, looking in prepositional phrase: excluded from a group, process, or opportunity, and feeling downhearted as a result.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Excluded from a group, process, or opportunity, and feeling downhearted as a result.
    • Won't you take me back again? I'll be waiting here till then / On the outside looking in1964, “I’m On the Outside (Looking In)”, performed by Little Anthony and the Imperials
    • "In a sense, I've always felt on the outside, looking in," Mr. Douglas says. "It's my background, damn it. My father was an illiterate Russian immigrant, a ragman, the lowest rung on the economic scale. There were six sisters and my mother; I was the only boy. To be a young Jewish boy in a...1988 August 24, Mervyn Rothstein, “Kirk Douglas And Anger”, in New York Times, retrieved 02 Aug 2015
    Synonyms:
    alienated

Synonyms of on the outside, looking in

Forms of on the outside, looking in

alternative formon the outside looking in

Questions about on the outside, looking in

What does on the outside, looking in mean?
On the outside, looking in means excluded from a group, process, or opportunity, and feeling downhearted as a result.
What part of speech is on the outside, looking in?
On the outside, looking in is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the outside, looking in in the dictionary

  1. on the otherhand
  2. on the outlook
  3. on the outs
  4. on the outside
  5. on the outside looking in
  6. on the outside, looking in
  7. on the pad
  8. on the panel
  9. on the part of
  10. on the pat and mick
  11. on the pdq

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the outside, looking in (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-on the outside, looking in.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the outside, looking in.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_outside%2C_looking_in. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.