Overview

How to spell overview

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce overview

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does overview mean?

1. nounA general summary or broad survey of a subject that covers its main points.

Overview in a sentence

• The manager gave a brief overview of the quarterly results.

• The first chapter offers a useful overview of the whole topic.

Where does overview come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from the native English prefix 'over-', meaning 'above' or 'covering the whole', and the noun 'view', which English borrowed in the 1300s from Old French 'veue', a sight or act of seeing, ultimately from the Latin verb 'videre', meaning 'to see'. Curiously, in earlier centuries 'overview' could carry the sense of supervising or inspecting from above, much like the related verb 'oversee'. The modern meaning, a broad summary that takes in the whole subject at a glance, became dominant only in the twentieth century and is now standard in business and study contexts. The spelling is reassuringly regular: it is simply 'over' joined directly to 'view' with no hidden letters, so the only thing to remember is that it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• over- (above, comprehensive)
• view (a sight or survey, from Latin videre 'to see')