Look Up – Phrasal Verb Meaning, Grammar, and Real-Life Examples
Look up means to find information in a dictionary, online, or in another source. It can also mean to visit someone, or – when things “are looking up” – to get better. This guide explains the look up meaning (phrasal verb), its grammar, and the famous trap with look up to.
- Look Up Meaning: What Dictionaries Don’t Tell You
- When to Use "Look Up" (and When Not To)
- How to Use "Look Up" Phrasal Verb in a Sentence
- Look Up Phrasal Verb: 10 Natural Examples
- Look Up in a Dialogue
- Another Way to Say "Look Up": Similar Expressions
- Opposite or Contrast Expressions
- Avoid These Mistakes
- Practice: Your Turn!
- Quick recap
Look Up Meaning: What Dictionaries Don’t Tell You
You’re reading a book in English and you see the word reluctant. You don’t know it. You take your phone, type the word, and find the answer. That’s it – you’ve just looked it up.
The main look up dictionary meaning is simple: to search for specific information in a source – a dictionary, Google, a database, a train schedule. The meaning is figurative, not literal: you’re not looking “up” at the sky. Think of it as pulling information up to the surface, out of a book or a screen.
Why do native speakers say look up instead of just find or search? Because look up describes the whole everyday action in one natural phrase: you don’t know something → you check a source → you get the answer. It’s the verb of the Google era.
Two more meanings are worth knowing:
- Look someone up – meaning: to visit or contact a person, usually when you’re in their city. “Look me up if you’re ever in Prague.”
- Things are looking up – life or a situation is getting better. “I finally got a job offer – things are looking up!”
What look up does NOT mean: it is not “to respect someone.” That’s a different verb – look up to someone – and we’ll come back to it, because mixing them up is the most common mistake learners make.
When to Use “Look Up” (and When Not To)
Use look up whenever you need a fact and you know where to check it.
Picture this: two friends are arguing about which year Titanic came out. One says 1996, the other says 1997. Finally one of them sighs, takes out his phone and says: “Okay, I’ll just look it up.” Argument over. That’s the natural home of this phrasal verb – quick, practical fact-checking.
It also works perfectly at work. A client asks you for last month’s numbers, and you don’t remember them. Instead of guessing, you say: “Let me look that up and get back to you.” It sounds professional and honest.
Use look someone up when you want to sound warm and friendly while saying goodbye: “You’re moving to Lviv? Look me up when you get there!”
When to choose another word: in academic writing, look up is too casual – prefer consult or refer to. And if you’re physically searching for your keys, you need look for, not look up.
How to Use “Look Up” Phrasal Verb in a Sentence
Pattern 1: look up + noun / look + noun + up
Pattern 2: look + pronoun + up (look it up)
Pattern 3: look + person + up (look me up = visit me)
Use Pattern 1 or 2 when you check information; use Pattern 3 when you talk about visiting or contacting a person.
|
Common phrase |
Natural context |
|
look up a word |
reading or studying English |
|
look it up online |
quick fact-checking with a phone |
|
look up the schedule |
travel, trains, flights, opening hours |
|
look up the price |
shopping or comparing options |
|
look up an old friend |
reconnecting with someone in another city |
|
look me up |
a friendly invitation when saying goodbye |
Quick grammar note: Look up is separable. Nouns can go before or after up, but pronouns must go in the middle: look it up, never look up it. Don’t confuse it with look up to you / look up to someone, which means “to admire” – if you say “I look up to you,” you’re calling that person your role model, and someone you look up to is a person you deeply respect.
Look Up Phrasal Verb: 10 Natural Examples
- I didn’t know what “reluctant” meant, so I looked it up on my phone.
- For homework, please look up the following words in a dictionary: curious, brave, honest.
- Can you look up the train schedule? I think we’re going to be late.
- He looked up the recipe online but still managed to burn the rice.
- My son asked me why the sky is blue, and I had no idea – we had to look it up together.
- Don’t just guess the price – look it up before you order.
- I made the mistake of looking up my symptoms online at 2 a.m. Never again.
- She looked up an old friend while she was in Berlin, and they talked for hours.
- If you’re ever in my city, look me up – I’ll show you around.
- After six hard months, things are finally looking up for our team.
Notice the grammar: with a noun, both orders work (look up the word / look the word up). With a pronoun, there’s only one option: look it up.
Look Up in a Dialogue
Anna is helping her younger brother Max with his English homework, but one word stops them both.
Max: What does “fragile” mean? It’s in my homework.
Anna: Hmm, I’m not sure either. Look it up in your dictionary.
Max: Can’t you just tell me?
Anna: If I tell you, you’ll forget it tomorrow. If you look it up yourself, you’ll remember it.
Max: Fine… okay, it means “easy to break.” Like glass.
Anna: See? And now look up the example sentences too – they really help.
Max: You sound exactly like my teacher.
Anna: I’ll take that as a compliment.
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Another Way to Say “Look Up”: Similar Expressions
Look for
- Meaning: to try to find a thing or a person.
- Difference: you look for lost keys, but you look up information in a source.
- Example: I spent twenty minutes looking for my glasses – they were on my head.
Look into
- Meaning: to examine or investigate a problem.
- Difference: look into is deeper and slower than a quick fact-check; it sounds slightly more formal.
- Example: The manager promised to look into the delivery problem.
- Meaning: to search for something on the internet.
- Difference: very informal and only about online search; look up works for any source.
- Example: I don’t know who she is – just google her.
Opposite or Contrast Expressions
Go downhill
- Meaning: to get worse over time.
- Difference: the exact opposite of things are looking up; informal.
- Example: After the new owner arrived, the café really went downhill.
For the “find information” meaning, there is no exact opposite expression that learners need to memorize.
Avoid These Mistakes
Mistake 1
- Wrong: I didn’t know the word, so I looked up it.
- Correct: I didn’t know the word, so I looked it up.
- Why: Look up is separable, and with a pronoun (it, them, him, her) separation is not optional – the pronoun must go in the middle.
Mistake 2
- Wrong: I’ll look up for the word in the dictionary.
- Correct: I’ll look up the word in the dictionary. / I’ll look for my keys.
- Why: Look up for doesn’t exist. Use look up + information, or look for + a thing you’ve lost.
Mistake 3
- Wrong: I look up my grandmother – she’s my hero.
- Correct: I look up to my grandmother – she’s my hero.
- Why: Look up to someone means to admire or respect them. Without to, the sentence means you searched for information about her – or visited her!
Mistake 4
- Wrong: Look up the word on the dictionary.
- Correct: Look up the word in the dictionary. / Look it up on Google.
- Why: This is the classic “look up on” meaning confusion: use in with a dictionary or a book, and on with Google, a phone, or a website.
Mistake 5
- Wrong: My life is looking up my career.
- Correct: Things are looking up. / My career is looking up.
- Why: In the meaning “to improve,” look up takes no object at all.
Practice: Your Turn!
Complete the tasks using look up.
- Choose the correct option: I didn’t know his number, so I ___ . (a) looked up it (b) looked it up
- Complete the sentence: If you don’t understand a word, ___ it ___ in a dictionary.
- Correct the mistake: She looked up for the address online.
- Choose the correct preposition: Look up the meaning ___ a dictionary, or look it up ___ Google.
- Rewrite with a pronoun: I looked up the schedule. → I ___ .
- Look up or look up to? My older sister is someone I really ___ – she never gives up.
- What does this sentence mean: “Things are looking up at work”? (a) I’m searching for information at work (b) The situation at work is improving
Answer key:
- b;
- look it up;
- She looked up the address online;
- in / on;
- I looked it up;
- look up to;
- b.
