sight
/saɪt/ noun, verb
Forms sights sighting sighted sicht
- noun (uncountable) The sense or faculty by which objects are perceived through the agency of light; the sense by which we see. “Sight is a precious gift.”
- noun An act, instance, opportunity or possibility of seeing; the perception of objects by the eye; view (see also idiomatic expressions such as in sight, out of sight, catch sight of, etc.) “The sight of him in his new uniform made us all proud.”
- noun Something seen. “The sight in front of me seemed somehow familiar.”
- noun (often in the plural) Something worth seeing; a spectacle, either good or bad. “We went to London and saw all the sights – Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, and so on.”
- noun (often in the plural) A device used in aiming a projectile, through which the person aiming looks at the intended target; see also in one's sights.
- noun A small aperture through which objects are to be seen, and by which their direction is settled or ascertained. “the sight of a quadrant”
- noun (now colloquial) a great deal, a lot; frequently used to intensify a comparative. “a sight of money”
- noun In a drawing, picture, etc., that part of the surface, as of paper or canvas, which is within the frame or the border or margin. In a frame, the open space, the opening.
- verb (transitive) To see; to get sight of (something); to register visually. “to sight land from a ship”
- verb (transitive) To observe through, or as if through, a sight, to check the elevation, direction, levelness, or other characteristics of, especially when surveying or navigating.
- verb (transitive) To apply sights to; to adjust the sights of. “to sight a rifle or a cannon”
- verb (transitive, intransitive) To observe or aim (at something) using a (gun) sight.
Synonyms
vision eyesight ken perception view peep sight scope brimful load ton abundance battalion arseload assload bellyload boatload busload bucketful bucketload butt-ton visual sense visual modality survey batch deal flock good deal great deal hatful heap
Etymology
From Middle English sighte, from Old English sihþ (“something seen; vision”), from Proto-West Germanic *sihti (“seeing, sight”), equivalent to see + -t.
Cognate with Cimbrian gazicht (“sight, vision; pupil”), Dutch gezicht (“face; sight, vision”), zicht (“sight, vision”), German Gesicht (“face; sight, vision”), Sicht (“view; sight; visibility”), Luxembourgish Gesiicht (“face”), Siicht (“view; sight”), Yiddish געזיכט (gezikht, “face”), Danish sigt (“sight; visibility”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk sikt (“visibility”), Swedish sikt (“visibility”), sikte (“sight”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun The act of seeing; perception of objects by the eye; view; as, to gain sight of land.
- noun The power of seeing; the faculty of vision, or of perceiving objects by the instrumentality of the eyes.
- verb To get sight of; to see; as, to sight land; to sight a wreck.
- verb To look at through a sight; to see accurately; as, to sight an object, as a star.
Etymology [OE. sight, si, siht, AS. siht, gesiht, gesih, gesieh, gesyh; akin to D. gezicht, G. sicht, gesicht, Dan. sigte, Sw. sigt, from the root of E. see. See See, v. t.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “sight”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details