looky
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
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) …”.
Pronunciation edit
- Rhymes: -ʊki
Verb edit
looky
- (sometimes humorous, colloquial) Look.
- 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:
- Lookee here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be.
- 1877, Burdette, Robert Jones. The Rise and Fall of the Mustache: And Other ‘Hawk-eyetems’. Burlington Publishing Co., 1877. p. 15. [1]
- "… Cain would shout ‘Oh, lookee, lookee pa! what’s that?’"
- 1936, The American Mercury:
- "Looky thar!" "All right, I can see that hole, all right, but the argument was whether the earth was round or flat, and I say it's round!"
- 1989, Elizabeth Jolley, The Travelling Entertainer:
- The old man is cackling. "Looky here, looky here." He's got four little bright coins on his outstretched trembling hand.
Usage notes edit
Looky is almost always used imperatively, and followed by "here", "there", or "at".
Related terms edit
See also edit
References edit
- Sihler, Andrew Littleton. Language History: An Introduction. John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2000. p. 6. [2]