look up

English

Verb

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

1. Used other than as an idiom: see look,‎ up.

   We stayed up late to look up at the stars.

2. (intransitive, idiomatic) To have better prospects, to improve.

   Things started looking up after Jim moved back in with his parents.

3. (transitive, idiomatic) To obtain information about something from a text source.

   I didn't know what a mitochondrion was until I looked it up in a dictionary.

Related terms

• look someone up
• look someone up and down
• look up to
• lookup

Translations

used other than as an idiom

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 仰 (cmn) (yǎng), 上看 (cmn) (shàngkàn), 仰視 (cmn), 仰视 (cmn) (yǎngshì)

• Dutch: opkijken (nl)
• Finnish: katsoa (fi) (ylös); katsella (fi) (ylös)

• German: hochsehen (de), nach oben sehen (de)
• Japanese: 見上げる (ja) (みあげる, miageru)
• Malay: dongak (ms)
• Russian: ‎смотреть вверх (smotrétʹ vverx)  impf.
• Swedish: se upp (sv)

to have better prospects, to improve

• Finnish: näyttää (fi) hyvältä (fi), näyttää (fi) lupaavalta (fi)

• Russian: улучшаться (ru) (ulučšátʹsja) impf.

to obtain information about something from a text source

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 查 (cmn) (chá), 查閱 (cmn), 查阅 (cmn) (cháyuè)

• Czech: vyhledat (cs)
• Dutch: opzoeken (nl)
• Finnish: katsoa (fi)
• French: chercher (fr)
• German: nachschlagen (de), nachsehen (de)

• Hungarian: utánanéz (hu)
• Italian: cercare (it)
• Japanese: 検索する (ja) (けんさくする, kensaku suru), 調べる (ja) (しらべる, shiraberu)
• Romanian: căuta (ro)
• Russian: искать (ru) (iskátʹ) impf.
• Swedish: slå upp (sv)

Anagrams

• uplook