Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) to look utterly absurd.

2000

S. Taylor ‘Rich Hall and his creation, Otis Lee Crenshaw’ Observer 6 Aug. 🌐 The titles speak for themselves in most cases: [...] ‘Rodeo Man From the Shetland Islands’ (sample couplet: ‘Some folks say that they’re too small / I look like a monkey fucking a football’).

to be overdressed.

1979

(con. 1930s) J. Wolveridge He Don’t Know ‘A’ from a Bull’s Foot 2: The very few overdressed would be accused of ‘looking like a pox doctor’s clerk’.

see like a wet week under like a... phr.

(Aus.) to act in a straggling, uncoordinated manner.

1971

A. Buzo The Roy Murphy Show (1973) 108: Those blokes looked like Brown’s cows last year, but you’ve got ’em really hitting their hobbles and blazing up the come-back trail.

to look stern, grim and threatening; thus bluff as bull beef adj., stern, intimidating.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: To look like Bull-beef, to look Big and Grim.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: To look like bull beef, or as bluff as bull beef; to look fierce or surly.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

(US) to look very ill, very emotional or very tired.

1952		R. Ellison Invisible Man 486: That crazy sonofabitch [...] look[s] like death eating a sandwich.
1974		R. Carter Sixteenth Round (1991) 79: The entire building reeked of maggot-infested wolf pussy. Its inhabitants looked like death standing on the street corner eating lifesavers.
1974		S. Terkel Working (1975) 83: You must look presentable, not like death on a soda cracker.
1976		A. Walker Meridian 11: I must look like death eating a soda cracker [HDAS].
2004		tattodnanny.diaryland.com 🌐 Do you ever wonder where expressions come from? I mean, I know I didn’t come up with it, so what was the first person to use the phrase ‘I feel like death eating a cracker’ thinking? I mean, why would ‘death eating a cracker’ feel any worse than, say, ‘death eating a sandwich’ or ‘death eating pate fois gras’?

to look extremely ill, usu. very pale; cf. feel like death warmed up under feel v.

1922		M.M. Gibbon Pharisees 213: He came down to breakfast looking, as his young sister said, ‘like death warmed up’.
1936		Notts. Eve. Post 15 Dec. 4/1: You should have seen her face! For a moment she looked like death warmed up.
1941		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 5 June 2/3: You either look like a painted doll, or else you come out looking like death warmed up.
1953		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 9 Dec. 7/2: He wore a dinner jacket and had a little make-up otherwise he would look like ‘death warmed up’.
1967		(con. 1940s) M. Dibner Admiral (1968) 62: You look like death warmed up.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 204: Yeah, you’ve been looking like real shit warmed over for a couple of days.
1973		G.V. Higgins Digger’s Game (1981) 8: No wonder you look like death warmed over.
1982		N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 174: If we think that one of our loved ones looks ‘like death warmed up’ [...] we do not hesitate to tell them so.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 190: to look like death warmed up (very ill).
2000		C. Cook Robbers (2001) 112: Lomax looked like death warmed over.
2000		Guardian 24 Sept. 🌐 The RA’s controversial exhibitions secretary looks, frankly, like death warmed up.
2006		B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] ‘Bernie, you look like shit warmed up’.

to look furious; later as abbr. look like murder.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Murder, He lookd like Gods Revenge against Murder.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.

for one’s face to betray one’s disappointment.

1720

A. Ramsay ‘Rise and Fall of Stocks, 1720’ in Poems on Several Occasions (1776) I 157: But since his mighty patron fell / He looks just like Jock Blunt himself. Footnote 50 He looks just like Jock Blunt. Said of a person who is out of countenance at a disappointment .

(Aus.) to look utterly unkempt.

1993

Aus. Word Map 🌐 Mad Mary. untidy or unkempt, particularly refers to hair: She looks like Mad Mary.

to look notably downcast.

1922		Joyce Ulysses 312: – What’s up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.
1963		‘J.J. Marric’ Gideon’s Ride 136: He sounded as if he’d lost a pound and found a sixpence.
1999		S. Cameron More and More 142: ‘Perhaps I had lost a pound and found a sixpence,’ Finch said severely. ‘Perhaps I was upset by quite a different matter.’.

to be dressed up.

1932

(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 19: The Lonigans promenaded along Michigan Avenue, looking like Sunday.

(Aus.) to look or feel miserable.

1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 105: Have a good gawk at a man feeling about fifteen bob in the quied.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 90: So what are you sittin’ there looking like ten bob in the quid about?

(US) to appear wholly inferior.

1922		B. Hecht A Thousand and One Afternoons [ebook] I had it all over Mr. Erbstein as an argufier and that my arguments made his look like ten cents.
1929		E. Caldwell Bastard (1963) 64: I’ll show you some sure enough hot mommas what’s got the real stuff. Hell, I bet that Flo’d look like ten cents up side these babies.

see ant’s pants n. (1)

(Aus.) to look elated, to look very happy.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 699: [...] since the 1930s.

(US) to look very depressed.

2012

T. Piccirilli Last Kind Words 132: ‘I thought I looked trim and fit and tan.’ ‘You do. You also look like twenty pounds of hammered shit’.