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I'm not sure if I'm using a transitive version of "look" or an intransitive one.

I'm writing a short story about a village headman who is trying to find his successor. He gathers young men in a square and gives a seed to every one of them, and tells them to take care of it.

Then, he says

"Come here again in 6 months. Then I'll look (at) your plants and choose the new headman."

He is going to look at the plants to check what kind of plants have grown up. I looked up the dictionary "Merriam-Webster" and learned that "look" has several meanings and usages. One of them was a usage as a transitive verb, meaning "examine".

Which should I use, "look" or "look at"?

Thank you so much for your help.

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    To be honest, I don't understand Merriam-Webster's Definition 3. I would definitely recommend look at. Commented Jan 10 at 9:46
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    @Nigutumok The verb "to look" is commonly considered as an intransitive one taking a prepositional object/prepositional complement (or, as it is with some grammarians, an indirect object) after a preposition (at, for, into, to, towards). The whole prepositional phrase can be even seen as an adjunct (He looked at the plants/for the key/into the mystery/towards the development of his firm). Sometimes it may be transitive (she looked her age, she looked her disgust, the actor looked his part) but it’s not your case. Commented Jan 10 at 11:06
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    And beyond that some grammarians may even regard it as being transitive notwithstanding its having a preposition: "He looked at the plants" where "the plants" can be construed as being a direct object on the ground of possibility of passive transformation: "The plants were looked at". Commented Jan 10 at 11:06
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    See to look at something. This is a phrasal verb. The "at" is not optional here. Even the Merriam Webster page on to look notes that "look at" is a phrasal verb. Scroll down the page a bit to find it listed under "Phrases". Commented Jan 10 at 12:29
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    I think those usages that M-W is calling transitive are influenced by contemporary grammarians who accept clausal complements as direct objects. But that is not old-school transitivity. Commented Jan 12 at 13:24

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Setting aside grammatical analysis and terminology:

Look that your plants have enough light and water.

Can I look at your garden?

In the first, "look" means "see to it", i.e. "take care". Compare Latin origin of provide.

In the second, "look at" means "see" in the sense of "examine visually".

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This transitive use of "look" is now archaic except in some dialects. The Oxford English Dictionary (look verb, I.i.2.a.i.) describes it as "now regional" although it has examples going back to Old English (Northumbrian dialect) and one from Wycliffe's Bible, c. 1382 ("Y shal inwardly loke hym bote not ny"), continuing until the 19th century.

20th century examples are firstly from Yorkshire, from detective writer Gil North in 1967:

I was looking the sheep when the station rang up: they had to find me.

And from Trinidad and Tobago's newspaper the Independent in 1997:

Well look dis nasty old fowl-tief.

And the other 20th century example is from Northern Ireland; there are none from the 21st century.

So you should use "look at" instead.

There are other transitive senses of "look" still in common use, but they involve specific constructions. One is "Thompson looked a look of despair" where the object is a type of look. Another is "I looked him in the face" where the object is a person or horse, used together with a prepositional phrase, as in "look a gift horse in the mouth". There is also the use with an interrogative, as in "look what you've done".

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Then I'll look (at) your plants ...

We take sense 1b, under intransitive verb.

look at the map

look Merriam-Webster

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