looking glass

Etymology

A looking glass, or mirror (sense 1)

The statue Alice through the Looking-Glass in the grounds of Guildford Castle in Guildford, Surrey, England, UK, which depicts the character Alice from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass (1871) entering the looking-glass world by passing through a looking glass

Sense 2 (“a way into a bizarre world”) is a reference to the book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by English writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll (1832–1898).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlʊkɪŋ ˌɡlɑːs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈlʊkɪŋ ˌɡlæs/
• Hyphenation: look‧ing glass

Noun

looking glass (plural looking glasses)

1. A piece of glass with a reflective surface that one may look into to see an image of oneself; a mirror. [from 1520s]
   • 1847 January – 1848 July​, William Makepeace Thackeray, “In which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign”, in Vanity Fair. A Novel without a Hero, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, OCLC 3174108, page 9:

     The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword: The Turk Street Mile”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, OCLC 483591931, page 18:

     Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […] A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.

2. A way into a bizarre world.
   • 2016 July 29, Paul Krugman, “Who loves America?”, in The New York Times‎:

     It has been quite a week in politics. […] I know that some Republicans feel as if they've fallen through the looking glass.