sighted

1. 1
   adjective

   Having the use of one's eyes; able to see rather than blind.

   The museum offers tours designed for both sighted and blind visitors.

   A sighted guide walked beside him, describing the path ahead.

   Similarseeing

   Oppositeblind, unsighted

   Note

   A word that exists mostly to draw a line against blindness, so it keeps company with blind: sighted and blind visitors, blind and partially sighted people. It does not take more or very. Degree is marked instead by an adverb, and partially sighted names vision that falls short of full sight without being blindness.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of sight.

   Lookouts sighted the enemy fleet on the horizon just after noon.

   The comet was first sighted by an amateur astronomer in the spring.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty: lookouts sighted the fleet, and the fleet was sighted. The passive is the natural frame for reporting a first observation, such as a comet or a ship. Context also tells you which verb you have. A surveyor who sighted a line was checking it through an instrument. A marksman who sighted a rifle was adjusting its sights or aiming along them. The same spelling is also the adjective meaning 'able to see'.

3. 3
   adjectivein compounds

   Possessing vision of a specified type, degree, or range, whether sharp, weak, or limited to certain distances.

   The keen-sighted scout picked out the distant rider long before anyone else did.

   Generations of short-sighted clerks squinted over ledgers by candlelight.

   Note

   Here the word lives only as the tail of a compound, hyphenated to whatever describes the sight: sharp-sighted, keen-sighted, short-sighted. Most of these describe eyes, but not all. An iron-sighted pistol has nothing to do with vision; it borrows the other sight, the aiming device, and describes the gun's fittings. Read the first element to tell which kind of sight is meant.

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