Word.ws English Dictionary

people-watch

people-watch verb: to observe people and their behavior as a recreational activity.

Verb

people-watch (third-person singular simple present people-watches, present participle people-watching, simple past and past participle people-watched)

  1. (intransitive) To observe people and their behavior as a recreational activity.

Forms of people-watch

third-person singular presentpeople-watches
present participlepeople-watching
past participlepeople-watched
pastpeople-watched

Origin of people-watch

From people + watch.

Words formed from people-watch

Questions about people-watch

What does people-watch mean?
People-watch means to observe people and their behavior as a recreational activity.
What part of speech is people-watch?
People-watch is a verb.
What is the past tense of people-watch?
The past tense of people-watch is people-watched.

Words near people-watch in the dictionary

  1. people-pod
  2. people-pods
  3. people-smuggler
  4. people-smugglers
  5. people-smuggling
  6. people-watch
  7. people-watched
  8. people-watches
  9. people-watching
  10. peopled
  11. peopled out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: people-watch (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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Cite this entry: “people-watch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/people-watch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.