look daggers at


look daggers at (one)

To glare at someone very angrily, spitefully, or disdainfully. I noticed the bride looking daggers at the best man as he started making vulgar jokes during his speech.See also: dagger, look

look daggers at someone

Fig. to give someone a dirty look. Tom must have been mad at Ann from the way he was looking daggers at her. Don't you dare look daggers at me! Don't even look cross-eyed at me!See also: dagger, look

look daggers at

glare angrily or venomously at. The expression speak daggers is also found and is used by Shakespeare's Hamlet in the scene in which he reproaches his mother.See also: dagger, look

look daggers at

To glare at angrily or hatefully.See also: dagger, look

look daggers at, to

To glare at someone. The term first appeared in the Greek playwright Aristophanes’s The Birds (ca. 414 b.c.) and was alluded to several times by Shakespeare. “There’s daggers in men’s smiles,” he wrote (Macbeth, 2:3). The image aptly conveys the fierceness of such a glance and appealed to numerous other writers, including Thoreau. A synonymous cliché is if looks could kill, which has been around since the early 1900s. Frank Harris used it in My Life and Loves (1922): “When they let me up I looked at Jones, and if looks could kill, he would have had short shrift.”See also: dagger, look