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overlook

OH-ver-look · verb

Middle EnglishEnglish

Origin

Overlook comes from Middle English overloken, formed from over- and loken, the ancestor of "look." It's a straightforward compound: to look over something.

Journey

The word simply joins over- to look, and has carried that literal sense of looking over or across something since Middle English.

Related words

Its clearest relative is "look" itself, since overlook is built directly on top of it with the prefix over-.

More words

From Middle English

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