site

noun \ ˈsīt \

|Updated on: 14 Jun 2018

Editor's Note: cite, sight, and site

Definition of site

1 a : the spatial location of an actual or planned structure or set of structures (such as a building, town, or monuments)

b : a space of ground occupied or to be occupied by a building

2 a : the place, scene, or point of an occurrence or event

a picnic site

b : one or more Internet addresses at which an individual or organization provides information to others

an FTP site

; especially : website

See site defined for English-language learners

See site defined for kids

Examples of site in a Sentence

Hard hats must be worn on the construction site.
They visited the site of their future house.
The company has chosen a new site for its office building.
the site of the battle
Federal investigators combed through the crash site.

Recent Examples of site from the Web

Kayak sites include Galveston Island State Park and Drum Bay.

— joy sewing, San Antonio Express-News, "Weekend getaway: Your guide to all things Galveston," 11 June 2018
Ford recently transferred about 200 members of its mobility team into a former factory site in Corktown and is reported to be interested in multiple other parcels in the district.

— john gallagher, Detroit Free Press, "It's official: Morouns sell Detroit train station to Ford," 11 June 2018
The timing -- as was true for so many -- couldn't have been worse, hitting the store in the midst of building an independent music streaming site designed to compete with iTunes.

— graham hacia, Billboard, "Records & Reefer: Amoeba Music's Flagship Store in Berkeley Opens Hi-Fidelity Pot Shop to Boost Business," 11 June 2018
Other sites said proper treatment would almost eliminate her risk of transmitting the virus to her husband, who was uninfected, or their baby.

— jon cohen, Science | AAAS, "Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic is getting worse, not better," 11 June 2018
The meals are prepared at the four school sites and taken to the library.

— jess nocera, Howard County Times, "Mobile site added to free Howard County summer lunch program for children," 11 June 2018
Police headquarters has a 1950s-era jail on its third floor that serves as a temporary holding site for Metro Corrections when its main facilities are overcrowded.

— phillip m. bailey, The Courier-Journal, "Inmates flooded police chief's office with sewage, city official says," 11 June 2018
All of the on-site additions are nice, the flowerbeds and viewing platforms and cold plunges for the players.

— jon wertheim, SI.com, "50 Parting Thoughts From Roland Garros 2018," 10 June 2018
The pair — who began dating in May, shortly after Grande’s breakup from rapper Mac Miller — have been using the social media site to express their affection for one another with increasing frequency.

— maria pasquini, PEOPLE.com, "Ariana Grande and 'Happiest Boy' Pete Davidson Amp Up Their Social Media Flirting," 9 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'site.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

cite, sight, and site

The three homophones cite, sight, and site are occasionally confused by some people when used as nouns (sight and site) or as verbs (all three words). They needn’t cause trouble: with a little thought, most people who struggle with them can settle upon the correct choice.

Cite is most often encountered in the sense of “to name in a citation”; it may also mean “to mention as an example” or “to order to appear in a court of law.“

Most of the senses of sight are concerned with the act or action of 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”).

Site is most often concerned with location; it is related to the verb situate "to locate" and situation "a position." A building site is the place where the building is, or will be, located. In contemporary English, site has increasingly been used as a shortened form of website, for the location of a specific page on the Internet.

If you connect citation with cite, eyesight with sight, and situate with site, you are unlikely to make an error.