Definition of site
- a picnic site
- an FTP site
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.
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.
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.
First Known Use: 14th century
in the meaning defined at sense 1a
See Words from the same year15th century
: the place where something (such as a building) is, was, or will be located
: a place where something important has happened
: a place that is used for a particular activity
: to place or build (something) in a particular location
See words that rhyme with site Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for site Spanish Central: Translation of site Nglish: Translation of site for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of site for Arabic speakers
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