Supervisory

How to spell supervisory

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce supervisory

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does supervisory mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the role of overseeing and directing the work of other people.

Supervisory in a sentence

• She took on a supervisory role after ten years on the factory floor.

• The bank failed to provide adequate supervisory oversight of its traders.

Where does supervisory come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb supervidere, meaning literally 'to look over' or 'to oversee', formed from super 'over, above' and videre 'to see'. Medieval Latin produced the agent noun supervisor for one who watches over the work of others, and English adopted that noun in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The adjective supervisory was then built on the same stem with the suffix -ory, which marks something that performs a function, giving the sense 'having the role of overseeing'. The shared videre root explains its family resemblance to words like vision, visible, and revise, all of which carry the idea of seeing. Remembering that the middle of the word hides 'vis' (the seeing part) is a useful guard against misspelling that syllable.

How the word is built

• super- (over, above)
• vis (from Latin videre: to see)
• -ory (relating to, having the function of)