Word.ws English Dictionary

overseers

overseers is the plural of overseer.

Meaning of overseer

Noun

overseer (plural overseers)

  1. (historical) The manager of a plantation of slaves.
    • It is often deemed advisable to knock a man slave down, in order to tie him, but it is considered cowardly and inexcusable, in an overseer, thus to deal with a woman.1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 3, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC
  2. (historical) An officer responsible for the care of the poor, making out lists of voters and those who had not paid taxes, etc.
  3. (obsolete) A critic.
  4. (obsolete, Tyndale Bible, also puristic) A bishop.

Questions about overseers

What is overseers the plural of?
Overseers is the plural of overseer.

Words near overseers in the dictionary

  1. overseen
  2. overseer
  3. overseeress
  4. overseeresses
  5. overseerism
  6. overseers
  7. overseership
  8. overseerships
  9. oversees
  10. overseethe
  11. oversegment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overseers (page history and authors); overseer (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.

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