#154 Different Synonyms for ‘To See’

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you this afternoon?

Jill: Pretty good thanks, how are you?

Steve: I'm fine. Jill, I see that you are looking out the window. What do you see?

Jill: I'm watching the trees swaying from the howling wind. The wind is blowing like crazy outside.

Steve: You know it's funny, we used three words there. I said are you looking out the window? What do you see?

Then you told me that you saw trees or whatever you said.

Jill: I think I said I'm watching. Steve: And you said I'm watching, so you used four different words. What are you looking at right now?

Jill: I'm looking at the sky, the blue sky, the buildings and the ocean outside of the window. Steve: So here we have another word. It's interesting, something that is as common a human activity as looking at things and watching and observing. I think there are a lot of words in many languages to describe this idea of looking at things and English is no exception. One of our learners asked us if we would talk a little bit about the different words that mean “see” and “look” and “watch” and so forth. This came from Marianne, who is a good friend whom I visited recently in France and who is creating a lot of excellent content for us in the French section of LingQ. She felt that it was a bit confusing for her, all these different words that have slightly different meanings, but all have to do with seeing. When we say look do we say look the tree?

Jill: You always look at something.

Steve: I wonder why that is. We see the tree. We watch…what?

Jill: Watch television.

Steve: Watch television. We see the sky. We look out the window. People just have to get used to how those words work. Looking seems to be more the action. It's not obvious that you're seeing anything. Jill: Exactly.

Steve: I mean you might be looking at the scenery, but you don't see the sheep that are on the mountainside. You're looking in that direction, but you don't see it. Jill: Exactly, yeah, you can be looking and not be observing, not be taking in.

Steve: There's another word, “observe” has the same idea of seeing. When you observe or when you see, as you say, you're noticing. Another word, you're “noticing” it; you're observing it. When you're “watching” something you could still not see it. Even though you're watching the street because you're looking for your friend, but you don't see your friend even though you're watching. Jill: And they could be standing right there.

Steve: They could be standing there behind a telephone pole, so these are the different nuances. There are some other words that talk about different kinds of vision. What's another one that comes to mind? Jill: “Glancing.”

Steve: Glancing, yeah, when will you use glance?

Jill: Usually it's when you look at something quickly, typically. You give a quick glance.

Steve: There is also something about glance, which suggests that it's indirect somehow. If I'm staring at you then it's not a glance. A glance is almost hidden; it's almost indirect. We talk about a “glancing blow.” In other words, if you're swinging with an ax and you're chopping wood and you miss the wood and it kind of goes off to the side it's like a glancing blow. I think there is that sense of somehow indirect or furtive. You know, “peek”, you take a peek at something. You don't really want the person to see that you're looking at them. You're having a peek or you might open a book very quickly and have a peek. Let's say you're writing and exam and you brought your dictionary and you have a quick peek in the dictionary and close it. Jill: A quick look, exactly; a quick glance, a peek.

Steve: Yes, a peek, whereas a word that sounds a bit like peek is “peer”, but you peer…it's not the same as peek. When do you peer? Peer suggests something that's also a little bit hidden, but longer lasting; you're peering into. I picture myself peering into this deep well.

Jill: I was just going to use the exact same example, actually, peering into a well.

Steve: You know what's funny about that, we are so conditioned, you know. I mean, peering into a well. I mean probably over the how ever many books we have read, peer seems to always be connected with peering into a well.

Jill: Because it's almost like you use peer when looking through some sort of hole or something. Steve: Do you peer into a telescope?

Jill: You peer into a telescope or through whatever you call it that's in the door. Steve: The keyhole. You're peering through the keyhole. Jill: Right.

Steve: And it's funny, that's why, again, I refer to LingQ, but people can use Google. If you pick a word in Google and Google it you'll see all these associations and the same in LingQ and so you'll see which words most often come together. I talked about a glancing blow. We talk about take a peek, peer. Here's another one “gaze”. You know, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Jill: You know what comes to mind with gaze is to gaze longingly or lovingly at someone. To me, that's what comes first. Steve: Alright and I thought immediately of avert your gaze, okay? You may be staring at someone, but somehow you don't want that person to know that you're looking at them, so when they look at you you quickly… Jill: …look away.

Steve: So you avert your gaze, but yeah, gazing lovingly at your child, for example. Two lovers walking hand-in-hand in the sunset or whatever it might be; gazing at the sunset; you can gaze at the sunset.

Jill: You can also look at the sunset, I mean you don't have to just say gaze. Steve: Right, so there are these associations. I mean if I say to you the word “gloat”, what do you think of?

Jill: It's negative to me. Gloating is something you do when you're proud of yourself, usually for having done something better than somebody else or for having beaten somebody at something. Steve: Right, almost like rubbing it in.

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Steve: You're gloating. I mean it's one thing to be proud, but it's another to…like if we played tennis and you beat me, which you wouldn't do. Jill: Probably not. I don't play tennis. Steve: No, I'm just joking, you probably would because you'd cheat, but no, if you then after beating me, which is bad enough, and then you kind of strutted around gloating… Jill: …with a smirk on my face…

Steve: …that would be gloating; rubbing it in, as we said. There's another expression. These are different ways of observing and, therefore, looking, seeing. I guess there's also, you know, we can be very deliberate in the way we look or observe. We can inspect something looking for clues if we're Sherlock Holmes, right? We can survey the scene. After a disaster like an earthquake or something then people come to survey.

Jill: You're taking your time, right? You're not just taking a quick glance; you're really spending a lot of time deliberately looking to find certain things. Steve: You are looking with a very deliberate, specific, purpose in mind as opposed to the glance, which is the quick glance or the gaze, which is kind of a vague, you know, enjoying looking at something whereas if you're surveying something, if you're inspecting something… Jill: …scrutinizing something.

Steve: Scrutinizing, very good. These are all ways of perceiving. It's not really, but a perception. We talk about perception as the way our senses sort of are in contact with stimulus and sending messages to the brain that the brain then processes into either a smell or an image or something, so these are different ways that we perceive. I think we've now come to use the word perceive also to mean interpret. Jill: Exactly, more often I think than not.

Steve: More often, so what is your perception of, I don't know, the latest policy that the government has put forward or something. Jill: What do you think about that? Basically, what are your views about that?

Steve: But you know this is interesting Jill, because you say what are your views about it, but view implies vision. The word vision, view, see, has also come to mean what is your opinion.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So, you know, the expression “do you see what I mean?”

Jill: Do you understand what I mean?

Steve: Do you see what I mean?

Jill: I understand. I see.

Steve: You see. You see? You see. So see has this implication of understanding. The other thing about seeing is you can look at something and…I mean how many times has it happened to you that you don't notice something until someone points it out to you? Jill: Oh, very often, yeah. If somebody says have you ever noticed that Kate wears a lot of black? I may never have noticed that, but now the person has pointed that out I'll realize yes. You know, four out of five days this week Kate has worn black, so I'm paying attention now. Steve: Right, so you notice it.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Exactly and I feel sometimes we have trouble seeing something that we don't already know is there. You know, I think that's the way our brain works. Once we know it's there we notice it; we see it. Jill: Or something that we see all the time we don't notice because it's so familiar, so common. Just like if you're reading over your own writing and you're editing it and you're looking for errors and you've read it five times you may not see one of your errors; you may not catch it because you might not notice it. Steve: Absolutely, so you might be scrutinizing it to use your word earlier, but you may still not notice the errors or you may not see the errors. That's of course why at The Linguist we try to encourage people and help them develop the ability to notice things in the language because they can read the language or hear the language many, many, times and not notice, for example, that you say I look at the tree. People who have studied lots of grammar and have studied and have listened and read and they'll say I look the tree. Jill: And people who speak English very well even will say that.

Steve: Well that's right and many, many, similar examples: I listen him. Once we get people to start noticing, seeing, and they start noticing it a few times then once they notice it then they learn it whereas if they just read it in some instructions somewhere…I mean we're getting a little bit off topic, but how good are you at reading instructions for something that you are not familiar with? It's very difficult. Jill: Yeah and time consuming and frustrating.

Steve: Exactly, whereas if you're already familiar with the experience you have a rough idea of what's involved then you read the instructions then it makes sense. In a way, we have to already know something in order to see it, in order to perceive it, in order to notice things. You might be “pouring” over the instructions, pouring over the manual, trying to “detect”, to “discern”, you know, what is...

Jill: …“figure out.”

Steve: But figure out is more trying to interpret, but to discern is a seeing thing. You're trying to sort out by vision what's useful, what's not useful, detect, so these are all forms of seeing, which implies some, you know, interpretation on your part. You know, I think there are probably more words that relate to vision that we could talk about. I don't think it's a good idea to sort of develop a great long list of these and give our learners a great list and say here, make sure you know when to use these because that's not possible, but we can maybe make people a little bit observant, a little bit sensitive to these differences and ask them to observe these words. Following up on our discussion of last week it might be a good idea to tag some of these words. If they save them and they feel that there's an association or they have trouble discerning, seeing, the differences in how to use these words, tag them, collect them as a list and then you can go and study them and see the difference examples and see how they all fit together. Jill: Very good idea.

Steve: Alright, do you see what I mean?

Jill: I see.

Steve: Alright, what else can we say? I think that's about it. One thing that we should perhaps say is that today we talked about different words relating to vision and seeing…

Jill: … and looking.

Steve: I beg your pardon? And looking and watching, but people may have other groups of words that they would like us to talk about, so we're grateful to Marianne for giving us this list and we look forward to other people giving us requests… Jill: …on the EnglishLingQ Forum.

Steve: On the EnglishLingQ Forum, absolutely, or the LingQ Forum. When you say the EnglishLingQ Forum…

Jill: The EnglishLingQ Forum is in the LingQ Forum.

Steve: It's in the LingQ Forum, okay. Jill: It's a Forum within the Forum. Steve: I wasn't familiar with the term. Within LingQ there is an English Forum, is that what you mean?

Jill: Within LingQ there is a Forum.

Steve: Right.

Jill: In the Forum there are different Forums: Ask Your Tutor Forum, Support and there's an EnglishLingQ Forum. Steve: Okay, so hopefully, one day we'll get some people doing this in French or Japanese and then we'll have the JapaneseLingQ Forum, there you go. Thank you very much Jill.

Jill: Thank you.