Looked

How to spell looked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce looked

What does looked mean?

1. verbPast tense of look: directed the eyes towards something in order to see it.
2. verbPast tense of look: appeared or seemed to be a certain way.

Looked in a sentence

• She looked at the map before choosing a route.

• The old house looked smaller than she remembered.

• He looked under the bed for his missing keys.

• After the long flight he looked exhausted.

Where does looked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'look', which descends from the Old English verb locian, meaning 'to use the eyes' or 'to behold'. The root belonged to a small West Germanic family, with related forms in Old Saxon locon and Old High German luogen 'to spy out', though it has no clear surviving cousins in the other major Germanic branches. From the earliest records the sense centred on directing the gaze, and over time it broadened to cover the idea of seeming or appearing a certain way, as in 'she looked tired'. The past tense was formed in the regular way by adding the dental -ed ending, a pattern that has stayed steady for many centuries. The spelling trap is mild but real: the final -ed is pronounced as a crisp 't' sound after the hard 'k', so writers occasionally feel tempted to write the ending as it sounds rather than as the standard -ed.

How the word is built

• look (root, from Old English locian 'to gaze')
• -ed (past tense suffix)