sight
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The ability to see.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sytIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsaɪt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The ability to see; the visual faculty
in the singular
The ability to see.
The act of looking or seeing or observing
The act of seeing; perception of objects by the eye; view.
Anything that is seen
“He was a familiar sight on the television.”
often in the plural
Something worth seeing; a spectacle, either good or bad.
verb
Take aim by looking through the sights of a gun (or other device)
transitive
To see; to get sight of (something); to register visually.
Catch sight of; to perceive with the eyes
“He caught sight of the king's men coming over the ridge.”
transitiveintransitive
To observe or aim (at something) using a (gun) sight.
transitive
To apply sights to; to adjust the sights of.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The ability to see; the visual faculty
Used this way, sight is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- visual modality , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Anythingnoun
“He was a familiar sight on the television.”
Catchverb
“He caught sight of the king's men coming over the ridge.”
More ways to use sight
- “He was a familiar sight on the television.”noun
- “The sight of his wife brought him back to reality.”noun
- “He caught sight of the king's men coming over the ridge.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
An optical instrument for aiding the eye in aiming, as on a firearm or surveying instrument.
Able to see.
The act of observing.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A joke whose effect is achieved by visual means rather than by speech (as in a movie).
A draft payable on presentation.
A draft payable on presentation.
The adjustment of a gunsight for elevation and windage on a particular range under favorable light conditions.
Sing from a score without having seen it before.
Perform music from a score without having seen the score before.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: ability to see
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.