Meaning & use
sightsee
Last updated
Meaning
verbintransitive
to visit famous or interesting places as a tourist, usually while traveling.
Grammar: No object: you sightsee in a city, not sightsee a city.
Patterns
- sightsee in a place
- go sightseeing
We spent the morning sightseeing around the old town.
They like to sightsee on foot rather than take tour buses.
After the meeting, she had a free day to sightsee.
Word forms
| third person singular | sightsees |
|---|---|
| past tense | sightseeed |
| past participle | sightseeed |
| -ing form | sightseeing |
Common combinations
- go sightseeing
- Let's go sightseeing before dinner.
- spend time sightseeing
- We spent two days sightseeing in Rome.
- sightseeing tour
- The hotel offers a sightseeing tour of the city.
- a day of sightseeing
- After a long day of sightseeing, we were exhausted.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
- sightseeing noun
- the activity of visiting interesting places as a tourist.
- sightseer noun
- a tourist who visits famous places.
Commonly confused: sightsee or see the sights?
sightsee vs see the sights
This phrase means the same thing but is a fixed expression, not a verb; you cannot say 'I sightsee the sights'.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'sightsee' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Sightsee' is intransitive, so it needs a preposition like 'around' before the place; option 1 wrongly gives it a direct object, option 2 uses the wrong past form, and option 3 uses the -ing form without a helping verb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sightsee”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.