on the lookout

on the lookout idiom
Also, on the watch. Vigilant, alert, as in Be on the lookout for the twins—they're somewhere on this playground, or He was on the watch for her arrival. Both phrases were originally used with upon. Upon the lookout was originally nautical usage, meaning “on duty being watchful” (as for another ship, rocks, or land); it appeared in the mid-1700s, and on replaced upon about a century later. Upon the watch was first recorded in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and on the watch in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1797).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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