Look up or lookup?
look up is a verb meaning “the words look and up, each in its own sense”; lookup is a noun meaning “An attempt to retrieve data”. Use look up as a verb and lookup as a noun. look up is written as two words and lookup as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between look up and lookup?
| look up | lookup | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb, noun | noun |
| Meaning | Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see look, up To have better prospects | An attempt to retrieve data The process of locating a term in a reference work |
| Example | We stayed up late to look up at the stars | My database lookup failed because I misspelled the word |
| Forms | none | lookups |
| Pronunciation | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | /ˈlʊkˌʌp/ |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: look up and lookup in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of look up and lookup
look up
- 1
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see look, up
We stayed up late to look up at the stars
- 2
Alternative form of lookup
- 3
To have better prospects
Things started looking up after Jim moved back in with his parents
- 4
To obtain, or seek to obtain, information about something
- 5
To obtain information about something from a reference book
I didn't know what a mitochondrion was until I looked it up in a dictionary
- 6
To enter a query into a database or search engine
If you look up a bunch of random characters, there will probably be no results
- 7
To reconnect or meet with someone that one used to know
lookup
- 1
An attempt to retrieve data
My database lookup failed because I misspelled the word
- 2
The process of locating a term in a reference work
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, look up or lookup?
look up is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; lookup about once in every 1 million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search look up vs lookup?
“look up vs lookup” is searched about 20 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lookup vs look up”, “look up or lookup”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.