How to Use leer in a Sentence

leer

1 of 2 verb
  • He gave her a leering look.
  • She complained that some disgusting man was leering at her.
  • Severed heads leered from stakes at people waiting in line to get through.
    — Jeremy Roebuck, Philly.com, 22 June 2018
  • Best, the camera can’t stop leering at Michael’s butt, and who can’t?
    — Alfred Soto, Billboard, 26 Oct. 2017
  • For a full five seconds, this man in the background of the shot just stands there, leering.
    — Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Male passersby leer at female guests roaming the streets around the hotel.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 31 Oct. 2022
  • Scar, weighed down by lifelike musculature, can no longer leer.
    — Nora McGreevy, BostonGlobe.com, 17 July 2019
  • Clearly, the guys at Pixar thought an old man leering at two young women was funny.
    — Mary McNamara, latimes.com, 3 July 2019
  • There’s no shortage of leering skulls; most are memento mori, but one is a parlor trick.
    — Cate McQuaid, BostonGlobe.com, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Cole leered into the plate seconds after the call, not flinching from the finish of his follow-through.
    — Chandler Rome, Houston Chronicle, 5 May 2018
  • To leer, grope, force, no matter what age, profession, protestation.
    — Michael Arceneaux, Glamour, 27 Aug. 2018
  • Sean was muscled, but not from the gym, and there was a defiant, leering gap in his grin, where one of his front teeth was missing.
    — Tessa Hadley, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2019
  • Respect for their friend finally overwhelms their hormones, and the boys stop leering.
    — Anthony Breznican, PEOPLE.com, 20 July 2017
  • In another, a widow fends off a leering priest by tricking him into sleeping with her maid.
    — Kathryn McKinley, The Conversation, 16 Apr. 2020
  • Instead of being leered at, women are simply ignored, not attended to at all.
    — Phillip MacIak, The New Republic, 7 Sep. 2023
  • Thunberg is drawn with her gaze fixed on passersby, leering on in perpetual contempt.
    — John Hirschauer, National Review, 14 Nov. 2019
  • The film adopts Lockjaw’s leering gaze over the curves of her body in a crucial scene before this fateful meeting.
    — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 24 Nov. 2025
  • And if those legs were only employed for seductive purposes, the camera might seem to be leering.
    — Joanna Robinson, VanityFair.com, 13 Mar. 2017
  • Adults would leer, staring pointedly at our food, though comments were mercifully rare.
    — Your Fat Friend, SELF, 7 Aug. 2020
  • The latter is a direct shot at sexist record industry insiders, and some older dudes who come to their shows just to leer at them.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 25 Mar. 2026
  • One student was observed leaning back and leering at another student’s work.
    — Logan Jenkins, sandiegouniontribune.com, 13 July 2017
  • These details aren’t offered up as shocking twists, nailbiters dispensed to a public eager to leer and consume them.
    — K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone, 22 Aug. 2022
  • At the wedding, all of the couple’s guests morph into Sheeran, who leers at the horrified actor.
    — Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 7 Aug. 2025
  • At a Black Bear party, gotcha reporters and leering industry types jockey to meet her.
    — Tatiana Siegel, Variety, 27 Oct. 2025
  • To shoulder your way off the subway during rush hour is to run a gauntlet of leering lafufus (that is, faux Labubus).
    — Hilary Reid, Curbed, 24 Sep. 2025
  • And sometimes, amid all that love, lust, and leering in ride-sharing, there are just decent people, looking out for one another.
    — Jason Laughlin & Samantha Melamed, kansascity, 9 Aug. 2017
  • In 17 years as a hotel housekeeper, Dar has been propositioned and pursued, and leered at by guests too many times to count.
    — Fortune, 14 Dec. 2017
  • Watch some actual Old School TV in which the leering boss is not a figure to be admired.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 28 Apr. 2017
  • Take Pizzagate, and then add concocted footage of John Podesta leering at a child, or worse.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2018
  • For the last seven decades, Wahoo’s leering grin has stared out at fans from the caps, jerseys and shirts of both the Indians and their fans.
    — Jon Tayler, SI.com, 30 Jan. 2018

leer

2 of 2 noun
  • In the scene, the men leer at Caroline and touch her face.
    — Victoria Edel, PEOPLE, 1 Oct. 2025
  • Something between a chuckle and a leer.
    — Literary Hub, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Male passersby leer at female guests roaming the streets around the hotel.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2025
  • Para leer este artículo en español, visita el siguiente enlace.
    — Yuliana Montiel, Charlotte Observer, 29 May 2026
  • Hobert standing grinning for the camera while a menacing clown leers through a window behind her.
    — Carrie Battan, Vulture, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Harrelson brandishes that anything-goes leer that never gets old.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 11 Nov. 2025
  • Still, freedom often meant pumping, grudgingly, in odd places, while women who chose to nurse endured tsk-tsks or leers.
    — Laura Regensdorf, Vogue, 11 Sep. 2018
  • At the wedding, all of the couple’s guests morph into Sheeran, who leers at the horrified actor.
    — Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 7 Aug. 2025
  • In quarantine, without the leer of strangers on the sidewalk, could fabulousness occur?
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 10 June 2020
  • Aside from a brief flash of bared bum in the final scene, there is no full nudity here, and the show looks at its characters not with a leer but a rueful smile of compassion.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2020
  • At the spa, Victoria pops a pill to relax before her massage, while another old bald guy leers at Piper during a yoga class.
    — Dave Nemetz, TVLine, 23 Feb. 2025
  • Most of Apple’s sketches are executed with a leer, suggesting distance.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 17 Apr. 2020
  • Another image from the early nineties shows Sophia seated at a table, fixing the artist, or the viewer, with a horrifying leer.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2023
  • Arguably, the perfect outfit for the deep-frying weather was a silver bikini — sensible, striking, reflective of heat and light and leers alike.
    — Bart Bull, SPIN, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Sure there’s the conflict between the wealthy Monterey, California, moms the show illustrates with an uneasy leer.
    — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 16 Feb. 2017
  • When the band blows up amid tragedy, Zoe shoves her once-starry persona aside and embraces suburban life with a well-meaning husband and his creepy son, who leers at Cherry.
    — Caryn Ganz, New York Times, 8 Apr. 2025
  • The impersonal, modernist thrill of watching strangers on the crowded subway has been eroded, but those strange leers have also been replaced by actual fellowship on group text chats.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 26 Aug. 2024
  • Some of the same faces are AI replicated more than once in the same scene and sport strange zombie-like staring leers or appear out of scale with other surrounding character identities.
    — Philip Potempa, Chicago Tribune, 29 Aug. 2025
  • For someone who spoke in a language so uniquely his and Donald’s, their particular mechanized hum of a lyrical leer remains impenetrable.
    — Kelly Dwyer, Billboard, 3 Sep. 2017
  • Sure, some people might look at him a little funny for walking down the beach in a speedo in ten-inch heels, but compared to the adversity he's overcome in his life, Loresca is hardly bothered by the leers of strangers.
    — Jake Woolf, GQ, 23 June 2017
  • Where the documentary does excel is in its speedy ability to draw out and characterize the various personalities lurking around the case, though its eye for the revealing detail can at times turn into a leer.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 20 Aug. 2025
  • But the line between a gaze and a leer can be terribly thin—and The Royal Hotel shows in taut, tense sequences how being accommodating only works so well as a defense mechanism.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 22 Sep. 2023
  • Played by a Colman Domingo who is done up to look the most wax figurine of them all in a shellacking of makeup, prosthetics, and colored contacts, Joe is always either giving an avaricious open-mouthed leer or a cold-eyed glare.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 23 Apr. 2026
  • This holds truest for the relationship that eventually blossoms between Stede and the fearsome pirate warrior Blackbeard, played by Waititi with an impressive gray tangle of a beard and a leer that errs more curious than truly wicked.
    — Caroline Framke, Variety, 3 Mar. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'leer.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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