looker

The word "looker" is a transparent English compound built from the native verb "look" and the agentive suffix "-er." Its primary modern meaning, "an attractive person," is a semantic shift from the original literal sense of "one who looks." This evolution likely occurred through the idea of being "worth looking at" or being the object of the gaze, a process known as metonymy. While the verb "look" has deep Germanic roots, the formation of "looker" follows a standard and productive pattern in English for creating nouns denoting a person associated with an action.

Structure: look (to see) + er (agent suffix) - look: From Old English lōcian (to see, gaze, observe). A Germanic root of uncertain deeper origin, functioning as the core verb. - er: From Old English -ere, a common agent noun suffix (one who does an action), cognate with Latin -ator and Greek -tēr.