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looky

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

5 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "looky", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "looky" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "looky" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

looky is aEnglishverb. It means: Look.

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Key facts for looky
PropertyValue
Headwordlooky
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters5
Frequency rank#72,502
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of looky in English word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for looky is 5 letters long, classified as averb. Corpus data places it at rank #72,502 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Look.".

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for looky in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: None of the various attested forms appear in the OED, in Victor & Dalzell’s Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, nor in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. According to the RHD, 'looky' (also 'lookee') is an inter… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is looky, spelled L-O-O-K-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Look.

Etymology

None of the various attested forms appear in the OED, in Victor & Dalzell’s Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, nor in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. According to the RHD, 'looky' (also 'lookee') is an interjection attested from 1875–80 which is an alternative form of the imperative look ye! Similarly, the linguist Andrew L. Sihler indicates that ye, the now-archaic subjective form of the English 2nd pers. plural pronoun, “is fossilized in looky (here) …”.

Frequency rank: #72,502 in English

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "looky"?
"looky" is spelled L-O-O-K-Y.
What does "looky" mean?
As a verb, "looky" means: Look.
What is the origin of the word "looky"?
None of the various attested forms appear in the OED, in Victor & Dalzell’s Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, nor in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. According to the RHD, 'looky' (also 'lookee') i... See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.