oversee
Syllables: over·see/ˌəʊ.vəˈsiː/US/ˌoʊ.vɚˈsi/
oversee verb: to survey, look at something in a wide angle.
Verb
oversee (third-person singular simple present oversees, present participle overseeing, simple past oversaw, past participle overseen)
- To survey, look at something in a wide angle.
- To supervise, guide, review or direct the actions of a person or group.
- It is congress's duty to oversee the spending of federal funds.
- And overseeing them all, like a raddled old good-ish fairy, is Bill Nighy, playing a superannuated rocker hoping to get a Christmas number one with his cynically repackaged version of Love Is All Around.2003 November 21, Peter Bradshaw, “Love Actually”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 06 Mar 2026
- Synonyms:
- superintend
- To inspect, examine.
- Gamekeepers oversee a hunting ground to see to the wildlife's welfare and look for poachers.
- To fail to see; to overlook, ignore.
- Thereat the Elfe did blush in priuitee, / And turnd his face away; but she the same / Dissembled faire, and faynd to ouersee.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- To observe secretly or unintentionally.
oversee meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
oversee in Tamil
- மேற்பார்வையிடு
oversee in Urdu
- نظر رکھنا
oversee in Bengali
- তদারকি করা, দেখাশোনা করা
oversee in Malayalam
- നോക്കാതെ വിട്ടുകളയുക
More languagesFewer languages
- oversee in Kannada
- ಕಾಣಿಸು, ಗಮನಿಸು, ಪಾರುಪತ್ಯ ನಡೆಸು, ಪಾರುಪತ್ಯ ಮಾಡು
- oversee in Arabic
- أَشْرَفَ عَلَى ʔašrafa ʕalā
Examples of oversee in a sentence
- Based at BTP's London headquarters, Russell's team of three full-timers in the drone unit are responsible for overseeing the safety of drones in support of police officers.2022 February 9, Tom Allett, “The BTP's eyes and ears in the air”, in RAIL, number 950, page 50:
- The answers will make for difficult DfT reading, because it can't escape the fact that it has been the government department overseeing rail spending for the past 20 years.2024 September 4, Philip Haigh, “Can public-private partnerships be made to deliver?”, in RAIL, number 1017, page 53:
Synonyms of oversee
Forms of oversee
| third-person singular present | oversees |
|---|---|
| present participle | overseeing |
| past | oversaw |
| past participle | overseen |
Origin of oversee
From Middle English overseen, ouverseen, from Old English ofersēon (“to observe, oversee; to overlook, neglect”), equivalent to over- + see.
Words formed from oversee
Words that rhyme with oversee
Questions about oversee
- What does oversee mean?
- Oversee means to survey, look at something in a wide angle.
- What is oversee in Tamil?
- Oversee in Tamil is மேற்பார்வையிடு. See Oversee meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use oversee in a sentence?
- Based at BTP's London headquarters, Russell's team of three full-timers in the drone unit are responsible for overseeing the safety of drones in support of police officers.
- What part of speech is oversee?
- Oversee is a verb.
- How do you pronounce oversee?
- Oversee is pronounced /ˌəʊ.vəˈsiː/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of oversee?
- The past tense of oversee is oversaw.
Words near oversee in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: oversee (page history and authors); oversee (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); oversee (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Oversee (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); oversee (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); oversee (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-oversee.wav.
Cite this entry: “oversee.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oversee. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.