Language Lounge
A Monthly Column for Word Lovers
Make It Count: Dealing With Language's Little "Oversights"Mon Nov 03 00:00:00 EST 2014By Orin Hargraves
Oversight has two rather contrasting meanings. There's oversight-1: "an unintentional omission resulting from failure to notice something"—something you generally want to avoid. And there's oversight-2: "management by overseeing the performance or operation of a person or group"—something that in a perfect world would happen all the time, and would ideally prevent a lot of oversight-1s from happening. Why use the same word to designate such contrasting things?
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