Word.ws English Dictionary

onsight

onsight adjective: without having previously seen the terrain.

Adjective

onsight (not comparable)

  1. Without having previously seen the terrain.
    • Reardon made hundreds of free-solo ascents of challenging climbing routes done onsight, meaning without rehearsal or practice.2007 July 18, Bill Becher, “Rock Climber Presumed Dead After Accident Off Irish Coast”, in New York Times

Verb

onsight (third-person singular simple present onsights, present participle onsighting, simple past and past participle onsighted)

  1. (transitive) To perform a climb without having previously seen the terrain.

Forms of onsight

third-person singular presentonsights
present participleonsighting
past participleonsighted
pastonsighted

Origin of onsight

From on + sight.

Questions about onsight

What does onsight mean?
Onsight means without having previously seen the terrain.
What part of speech is onsight?
Onsight can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near onsight in the dictionary

  1. onside kick
  2. onside kicks
  3. onsides
  4. onsie
  5. onsies
  6. onsight
  7. onsighted
  8. onsighting
  9. onsights
  10. onsite
  11. onslaught

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: onsight (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “onsight.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/onsight. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.