look the part

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

appear suitable for a particular role or situation

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Có vẻ phù hợp với một vai trò hoặc tình huống cụ thể

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: have the appearance of something
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The shoulder belays and cricket sweaters were intended to look the part.
I thought maybe he'd convinced Malcolm that he was overweight — which he wasn't — and Malcolm had this real thing about us looking the part.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “look the part” mean?

appear suitable for a particular role or situation Literally: have the appearance of something

Is “look the part” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.