Sightseeing

How to spell sightseeing

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sightseeing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sightseeing mean?

1. nounThe activity of visiting and looking at places of interest, especially while travelling.

Sightseeing in a sentence

• We set aside a full day for sightseeing in the old quarter.

• The bus tour combines shopping with a little sightseeing.

Where does sightseeing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining the noun 'sight', meaning something worth looking at or a notable view, with the verb 'see', meaning to perceive with the eyes, plus the gerund ending -ing. Both 'sight' and 'see' descend from native Old English: 'sight' comes from 'sihth', related to 'seon', the ancestor of 'see', so the two halves were already close cousins long before they were stitched together. The combination 'sightseeing' is fairly young, emerging in English in the early 1800s alongside the noun 'sightseer', as leisure travel and organised tours became fashionable. The spelling trap lives entirely in the middle, where 'sight' ends in a silent 'gh' and then runs straight into the doubled 'ee' of 'see', producing the easily fumbled 'ghtsee' cluster. Remembering that it is literally the act of seeing the sights keeps the silent 'gh' and the double 'e' in their proper places.

How the word is built

• sight (something seen, a view)
• see (to look at)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)