STARING Synonyms: 34 Similar and Opposite Words

staring

verb

present participle of stare

as in gazing

to look long and hard in wonder or surprise her friends stared in disbelief upon seeing her walking arm in arm with her ex-husband

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Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of staring Some edits of the clip show the character in black-and-white, staring at the camera, emulating a horror movie scene. — Owen Carry, USA Today, 15 Aug. 2026 Some of them still live in cabins and grow their own food and others spend their days staring at Microsoft Office screens, but versions of the spontaneous hippie archetype still live on within each of them. — Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 14 Aug. 2026 In a downtown office building near Rio de Janeiro’s famous Sambadrome avenue, a dozen police officers sit behind desks staring up at a large bank of computer monitors. — Constance Malleret, Christian Science Monitor, 13 Aug. 2026 No sitting down eagerly and staring at a blank document, hoping to craft the next great American novel. — Literary Hub, 13 Aug. 2026 This usually means staring at it, open-mouthed, from a safe distance. — George Francis Lee, New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2026 Very few things in movies and television shows delight me as much as a mysterious character revealing his or her fascinating backstory through an extended monologue that is delivered while staring off into the unspecified middle distance. — Brian Grubb, Vulture, 10 Aug. 2026 The family also did several other activities in Tahiti, including biking, eating ripe fruit, taking in the sights and staring at the stars at night. — Kayla Grant, PEOPLE, 10 Aug. 2026 Remember, staring directly at the sun during the partial phases of an eclipse can cause permanent vision loss. — Anthony Wood, Space.com, 5 Aug. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for staring

Verb

Bored staffers spent endless hours gazing at their phones, leading supervisors to restrict phone use.

— Jesse Coburn, ProPublica, 12 Aug. 2026
The first image shows the mother-of-two enjoying a moment of calm outside, wearing a pair of pale jeans and a blue striped shirt, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.

— Jennifer Hassan, USA Today, 4 Aug. 2026

Definition of gazing

Verb

Instead, the skin-frying Friday saw common flow of people going through, gawking at the large screens and a group of sailors allowing some passing by to do pull-ups from a bar.

— Amethyst Martinez, USA Today, 3 July 2026
The walk to the stadium is a mile or so along the Alaskan Way, where restaurants like the Crab Pot are opening up, but everyone is gawking at the street spectacle.

— Simon Hughes, New York Times, 24 June 2026

Definition of gawking

Browse Nearby Words

star (in)

staring

staring down

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“Staring.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/staring. Accessed 18 Aug. 2026.

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Synonyms of staring

verb

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