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.

Examples of site in a Sentence

Noun 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 on the Web: Noun For weeks, Russian forces have been trying to seize Severodonetsk, a key site in the Donbas that’s outside the territory separatists have held for several years. — Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY, 21 May 2022 The Lincoln Memorial was briefly closed Saturday morning on the eve of its centennial anniversary festivities after a graduation celebration left the most visited site on the National Mall a bit of a mess, the National Park Service said. — Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post, 21 May 2022 That group would later launch its own super PAC, Hunter Nation Action, which spent $96,997 in ads against Democrats in the 2020 election, according to the campaign spending transparency site Open Secrets. — Eric Peterson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 May 2022 The minor league portion of the 2020 season, expected to be his first full campaign as a professional, was lost to the coronavirus pandemic, though Rutschman thrived at the Orioles’ alternate training site in Bowie. — Nathan Ruiz, Baltimore Sun, 21 May 2022 The DeLorean shown here belonged to the late actor, and it's currently listed on the auction site Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos. — Brendan Mcaleer, Car and Driver, 21 May 2022 Engoron also required a company hired by Trump to aid in the search, HaystackID, to finish going through 17 boxes kept in off-site storage, and for that company to report its findings and turn over any relevant documents. — Arkansas Online, 21 May 2022 Next week, the vehicle is expected to depart the station and land under parachutes in a desert site in the western part of the U.S., according to NASA. — Micah Maidenberg, WSJ, 21 May 2022 Lamar Valley is considered the best site to view wildlife in Yellowstone by Outdoor Project. — Fox News, 21 May 2022 See More

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.