Talk:look back

look back
Tagged but not listed. A candidate for "used literally" AFAICT. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "a candidate for 'used literally'"? DCDuring TALK 16:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Look back for "look behind oneself" wouldn't be seen as deserving an entry on its own, but because of the figurative sense someone added the literal one. Compare, say, second hand, which could be used in a sentence like "My first hand fell off due to leprosy but I still have a second hand to eat with". Equinox ◑ 16:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I had favored the literal sense and might still favor under exigent circumstances, but not when the literal meaning is incredibly obvious (this case) nor when the literal meanings are numerous. Delete. DCDuring TALK 16:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The sense not tagged ("To reminisce about a past time") seems unidiomatic to me as well: it's "think" + "to the past", like "looking forward to his meeting" and "thinking back to his days as a camper". Not sure, though. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Now tagged. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * We don't have senses of "look" or "back" that are clearly applicable. Until we have them it seems OTT to delete this.
 * RHU, AHD, and Wordnet; Cambridge, McGraw-Hill, and AH idiom dictionaries all have this.
 * Should we have don't look back or a sense at look back for that idiom? DCDuring TALK 22:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

To me, the 'obvious' meaning of look back is to look in the opposite direction to that in which one is travelling, i.e., back towards where one has just been, as in "As I walked away, I looked back to see that she had turned around and was talking to someone else." To look back in time is an extension of this sense. Pingku 18:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Deleted the redundant sense.--Jusjih 04:00, 8 November 2010 (UTC)