Overlooks

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To have a view from a higher position looking down on something ; to fail to notice or consider something important
2. To be situated so as to look down upon an area or scene ; to unintentionally ignore or omit something
3. To look down over and beyond a place from a higher point ; to overlook or neglect to observe a detail or fact

Etymology: "Overlooks" is the third-person singular present form of "overlook," so the history belongs to the verb itself. The verb is built from "over" and "look," two words that were already common in Old English, and the combination was inherited into Middle English as "overloken." Its two senses grew from the same image: a person standing high enough to look down across a landscape, and a person whose gaze passes past a detail without catching it. The physical sense came first, and the neglect sense developed from it. To overlook a valley was to survey it from above, and the step from seeing across something to failing to see something in it is a short one. Anyone who has scanned a page for a typo and missed the obvious error has followed the same logic that gave the verb its second meaning, with the eye sliding over the thing it should have caught.

Synonyms: ignores, misses, disregards

Antonyms: notices, acknowledges