Look down on means to think that someone is less important or less good than you. The reason is often added with for: look down on someone for their accent. In a literal sense, the phrase means to look at something from above: look down on the city from a hill.
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look down on + person/group; look down on + someone + for + noun/-ing
- Some classmates looked down on me because I didn't have expensive clothes.
- Good managers never look down on junior staff for asking simple questions.
- From our hotel balcony we could look down on the whole old town.
What changed
First versionMy cousin looks at me from above because I live in a small town.
RevisionMy cousin looks down on me because I live in a small town.
Look at someone from above may seem like a natural way to say this, but it only describes looking at a person from a higher place, for example from a balcony. To say that someone treats another person as inferior, use look down on.
The opposite is look up to: to respect someone and want to be like them. I've always looked up to my older sister. When the direction changes, so does the preposition: down on, but up to.
Your turn
Mark thinks people without a university degree aren't very clever, so he ___ them.
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looks down on — Mark thinks these people are less clever than him, so he treats them as inferior: looks down on. Look down at only describes looking down physically, for example at your phone screen.
Describe a situation at work or university when someone was looked down on. Say who looked down on whom and why.
At my first job, some senior engineers looked down on the interns for not knowing the software.
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