Did you know?
Cite, Sight, and Site
As homophones—words that sound alike but are distinct— cite, sight, and site are easily confused, but they have different meanings, uses, and origins.
Cite is most often encountered in the sense of "to name in a citation"—that is, a line or short section taken from a piece of writing or a speech; it may also mean "to mention as an example" or "to order to appear in a court of law." Cite is from the Latin citare, "to rouse, call on, summon," source too of citation and recite.
Most of the senses of sight are concerned with seeing. A wonderful spectacle might be described as a sight, as might the general capacity to see anything ("my sight is not as good as it once was"). Sight is also used in a number of fixed phrases, such as "out of sight, out of mind," "sight unseen," and "set one's sights on." Sight comes from Old English gesiht, meaning "the faculty or act of sight, thing seen."
Site is most often concerned with location; it is related to situate, "to locate," and situation, "relative position or combination of circumstances at a particular moment." A building site is the place where a building is, or will be, located. In contemporary English, site is frequently used as a shortened form of website, to refer to the location of a group of web pages. Site comes from Latin situs, meaning "place, position, site."
Associating citation with cite, eyesight with sight, and situate with site may be helpful in applying these correctly.
Synonyms
Examples of site in a Sentence
Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2024
From 1612 to 1800, today's Ginza district was the site of a silver coin mint, after which the district was eventually named.
—John Clifford, Travel + Leisure, 20 Apr. 2024
That’s not just capital NP national parks like Grand Teton and Olympic, but all 429 sites within the National Park System, ranging from national battlefields to seashores.
—USA TODAY, 20 Apr. 2024
Groups on and off campus say the site is evidence that the graduating senior is antisemitic, which Tabassum denied in an interview with The Times.
—Angie Orellana Hernandez, Los Angeles Times, 19 Apr. 2024
Standard side effects include redness, swelling, tenderness or bruising at the injection site, and occasionally a droopy eyelid.
—Rachel Treisman, NPR, 19 Apr. 2024
Family Dollar has more than 450 Ohio stores, according to data scraping sites like ScrapeHero and Smartscrapers.
—Chad Murphy, The Enquirer, 19 Apr. 2024
For the limited group of sites that are in the Superfund program, the federal program is important.
—Laura Schulte, Journal Sentinel, 19 Apr. 2024
The gun was seized just before 8 a.m., police posted on the social media site X, the former Twitter.
—Joe Marusak, Charlotte Observer, 19 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'site.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Articles Related to site
Dictionary Entries Near site
Cite this Entry
“Site.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/site. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
site
noun
Share