to look through
152
2.8
- phrasal verb
- Before the meeting, I will look through the agenda to ensure I am prepared.
- look through the essay
- start to look through
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Watch on YouTubeDavid, I've been looking through your cookbook.
- David, I've been looking through your cookbook.
- OK, then how about everyone take a look through Yulia's script?
- You can tell a lot by looking through a person's credit report.
- We, I'm just looking through my favorites.
- So why don't we look through all the collections and let's see.
- All right, so let's look through these worms and see what we got.
- Because AI has the data and will say, hey, I'm looking through the data.
- If you look through, I don't know if you've looked through the MPs register of interests.
- And we can read this out and look through the data.
- So what you did was you read the book, you looked through some documents, and that's all he did.
Examples
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I need to look through these documents to find the answers to my questions.
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And now they were all desperately looking through the crowd for familiar faces.
Fiction book (1991) -
Oh, I also need to look through the Radio Times.
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You looked through my search history.
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And let's just quickly look through the steps that are involved.
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You can tell a lot by looking through a person's credit report.
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I'm going to look through his things.
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I have a bunch of books that I'm that I'm looking through to find inspiration.
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If you look through my work, you'll see I try to present a balanced view of my subjects.
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Explore the websites of big agencies and look through their lists of represented authors.
Academic text (2010)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Study something carefully to understand it or decide
∞
2.5
To look at or test something to learn more about it
∞
1.3
To look at something to check it or find information
∞
2.8
To look carefully at something to find facts
834
2.5
To look at something carefully to find facts or problems
671
2.8
Examine something carefully to find out more
513
3.2
To study something carefully to understand it better
480
2.7
To look at something carefully to find mistakes or missing details
372
2.5
To check something carefully, like papers or work
349
1.0
To look at something carefully to understand it
323
1.0
To look at something carefully
192
1.3
To check something carefully, for example an essay or a machine
183
2.5
To look at something carefully to check if it works or is safe
143
4.1
To look closely at something that is hard to see
81
3.3
To look at something carefully to see what it is like
69
6.2
To look at something very carefully to check for mistakes
56
3.7
To look carefully through information to find what is important
45
3.9
To look through many things carefully to find something specific
34
5.4
To look carefully at a place or person to get information before you act
33
7.0
To read something slowly and carefully to understand it
24
5.5
To study things like books or papers carefully to find information
8
3.2
To look at something carefully and check all its parts
Antonyms
How Careful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to examine or review something carefully' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'look' (to direct one's eyes) with 'through' (completely, from start to finish); together they convey inspecting something thoroughly. This verb+particle composition is a regular, compositional pattern and is likely to be guessed by a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
The phrasal verb look through comes from the simple image of using your eyes to look and move through pages or a pile of papers to find or check something. So it means 'to examine' or 'review' something carefully, often by reading.