sights

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of sight.

   The travel guide ranked the city's sights by historical significance.

   Few sights in the region rival the canyon at dawn.

   Note

   The plural matters here, because two meanings of sight often appear in it. A city's sights are the things worth seeing there, and a rifle's sights are the aiming device the shooter looks through. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, as in the captain sights land. A determiner such as the, its or a city's in front of the word marks the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of sight.

   The captain sights land for the first time in three weeks.

   A keen birder usually sights the rare warbler long before anyone else does.

   Note

   The he-she-it form of a verb that almost always takes a direct object: a lookout sights land, and a surveyor sights a level line. Only the aiming meaning can stand without an object, usually followed by at, as in the marksman sights at the target. With plural subjects and after to, the bare form returns: they sight, to sight.

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