Supervise

How to spell supervise

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce supervise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does supervise mean?

1. verbTo watch over and direct the work, conduct, or progress of a person or activity.

Supervise in a sentence

• A senior nurse will supervise the new recruits during their first week.

• Someone must supervise the children near the pool at all times.

Where does supervise come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb supervidere, formed from super, meaning 'over' or 'above', and videre, meaning 'to see'. The literal idea was to look over something, that is, to oversee it from a position above. The form English actually inherited was the Medieval Latin past participle supervisus, and the verb entered English in the early 1400s with the sense of inspecting or reviewing. From watching over work, the meaning settled into directing and being responsible for the work of others. The same videre root surfaces in a crowd of familiar relatives such as vision, visible, evidence, and supervisor, and that shared 'vis' spelling is the reliable anchor: supervise always ends in -vise (you see over the work), never -vize.

How the word is built

• super- (over, above)
• vis (see, from Latin videre)
• -e