Lookout

How to spell lookout

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lookout

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lookout mean?

1. nounA person who keeps watch, or a high place from which to watch for danger or approaching things.
2. nounA person's own concern or responsibility, the matter they alone must manage.

Lookout in a sentence

• The climbers paused at the lookout to photograph the valley below.

• If he wants to invest his savings that way, it is his own lookout.

• One crew member stayed on lookout while the others slept.

• How she spends her free time is entirely her lookout.

Where does lookout come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built from the everyday verb 'look' and the directional word 'out', both of which are native Anglo-Saxon words. 'Look' descends from Old English locian, meaning 'to use the eyes, to watch or behold', while 'out' comes from Old English ut, meaning 'away from the inside'. The two were joined in the seventeenth century, first in a nautical and military sense for the act of keeping watch, then for the person who keeps that watch, and finally for the elevated place from which one watches. By the nineteenth century an informal British sense had grown up in which 'your lookout' meant your own concern or responsibility, the thing you alone must watch over. Because both parts are common short words, the only spelling point to remember is that it is written solid as one word, not as 'look out' the two-word verb phrase.

How the word is built

• look (Old English locian, to watch)
• out (Old English ut, outward) = a compound noun