Timeline for "I've been looking to do [this or that]." Is "looking to do" idiomatic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 23, 2014 at 18:43 | answer | added | MrHen | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 16, 2013 at 23:34 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 17, 2013 at 6:35 | |||||
| Dec 15, 2013 at 20:12 | comment | added | Evelyn | Good God, I LOVE this website! Thank you so much, Kris, Edwin, and John. This is certainly one of the best places online to find information about the language. Thanks again, everybody! | |
| Dec 15, 2013 at 18:04 | comment | added | John Lawler | It's a simple matter of a particular sense of a verb gaining the complement pattern of its synonyms. This sense of look means 'look forward/intend/plan', and like these predicates, it takes an infinitive complement. E.g, He's looking/intending/planning to mow the lawn. Look forward, of course, has a connotation of pleasant expectancy, and takes a prepositional phrase (with a gerund) instead of an infinitive: He's looking forward to mowing the lawn. | |
| Dec 15, 2013 at 16:07 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Depends which idiom dictionary you choose – this from the Sterling Dictionary of Idioms: looking to do something: [seeking the opportunity to do something – I don't like Kumar's definition] | |
| Dec 15, 2013 at 13:36 | comment | added | Kris | It's idiomatic, not an idiom yet. dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/look_6 | |
| Dec 15, 2013 at 13:34 | comment | added | Kris | Related: english.stackexchange.com/q/51022/14666 | |
| Dec 15, 2013 at 12:52 | history | asked | Evelyn | CC BY-SA 3.0 |