look a fright

look a fright (third-person singular simple present looks a fright, present participle looking a fright, simple past and past participle looked a fright)

1. (dated, informal) To look terrible, to look very dishevelled.

• look like something the cat dragged in

• “look a fright”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “look a fright”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “look a fright” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• “look a fright”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.