supervisor
Pluralsupervisors
- 1A person whose official job is to oversee the work of a person or group, or other operations and activities.
The factory supervisor coordinated three teams across the assembly floor.
As project supervisor, she reviewed each contractor's progress every week.
Similarmanager, overseer, boss, foreman, superintendent
Oppositesubordinate
Note
Literally an overseer: the word comes from Latin supervīsor, built from super ("over") and videō ("see"), and has been in English since the 15th century. In management it covers anyone charged with watching work get done, from a library to a bank. Wendy Dobson and Gary Hufbauer use it for the regulators who oversee merged financial giants, so the work being overseen need not be a single team's.
- 2Someone responsible for checking another person’s compliance with rules or other requirements.
The probation supervisor verified that he attended every required counseling session.
During the test, a supervisor circulated to confirm that everyone followed the guidelines.
Similarmonitor, invigilator, proctor
Note
Here the person watched is not an employee but someone held to rules. Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge (2013) glosses mashgichim, the inspectors who certify that kitchens keep kosher, as kosher supervisors. Unlike the workplace overseer, this supervisor need not direct anything. The job is checking compliance, which is why the word pairs naturally with probation, examinations and certification.
- 3In certain US states, an elected member of the board of supervisors, the governing body of a county.
Each district elects one supervisor to the county board.
The board's five supervisors debated the new zoning ordinance for hours.
Note
An elected office rather than a job: this supervisor answers to voters, not to a manager, and sits on the county's governing board of supervisors. The usage is American and confined to certain states. Read alone, the word will usually suggest the workplace overseer, so naming the county or the board makes the political meaning clear.
- 4A process responsible for managing and overseeing the operation of other processes.
The supervisor spawns worker processes and restarts them if they fail.
Their server runs a supervisor that recovers crashed child processes automatically.
Note
Computing borrowed the workplace title early. P. A. Crisman's 1965 programmer's guide to the Compatible Time-Sharing System calls its controlling program the supervisor, which handles console input and output and changes program status on a timed clock burst. Today the word more often names a process that starts worker processes and restarts them when they fail.
Practice
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Origin
Attested since the 15th century, it comes from Middle English supervisor, from Latin supervīsor, from supervideō (super 'over' + videō 'see'). It can also be analyzed as supervise + -or.