Word.ws English Dictionary

onlook

onlook noun: the act of looking on (something); observation.

Noun

onlook (plural onlooks)

  1. The act of looking on (something); observation.
    • The object of the onlook is taken to be more than physical, more than just sense-experience, therefore it is meta-physical.1966, Baptist Historical Society, The Baptist quarterly, volume 21, page 103
  2. That which is looked at, regarded, or considered.
  3. (rare) One's perspective or outlook.
    • This onlook is certainly foundational to Christianity. […] Religious belief is the conviction (or hope) that one's onlook conforms to an authoritative onlook, a divine onlook.2004, Richard Briggs, Words in Action

Verb

onlook (third-person singular simple present onlooks, present participle onlooking, simple past and past participle onlooked)

  1. (intransitive) To look on or look at; watch; observe; view; regard.
    • So they two fought for so long a time that those who onlooked were astonished at the strength and the courage and the endurance of those two champions, […]2008, Howard Pyle, The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions

Forms of onlook

Noun
pluralonlooks
alternative formon-look
Verb
third-person singular presentonlooks
present participleonlooking
past participleonlooked
pastonlooked

Origin of onlook

From on- + look. Compare Old English onlēċ (“onlook, consideration, regard”).

From on- + look. Compare Old English onlōcian.

Questions about onlook

What does onlook mean?
Onlook means the act of looking on (something); observation.
What part of speech is onlook?
Onlook can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of onlook?
The plural of onlook is onlooks.

Words near onlook in the dictionary

  1. onloads
  2. onloan
  3. onloaned
  4. onloaning
  5. onloans
  6. onlook
  7. onlooked
  8. onlooker
  9. onlookers
  10. onlooking
  11. onlooks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: onlook (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: “onlook.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/onlook. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.