Other forms: sights
Sight is the ability to see, or something worth looking at. Lose your sight, the sights of Rome, out of sight.
The two senses sit side by side and the plural nearly always means the second — seeing the sights. A sight on a rifle is what you aim through. Out of sight, out of mind and love at first sight are both very old. Note that the word is see plus an old ending making a noun of it.
1nounsightThe ability to see.
“My grandmother's sight is getting worse, so she can't drive anymore.”
2nounworthSomething worth looking at.
“The cathedral is one of the most famous sights in the city.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
sight is a sense, or a spectacle.
Old English sihth is from the root of see plus a noun-forming ending. The gh spelling records a sound long since lost.
Proto-West Germanic
*sihti — seeing, sight
Old English
sihþ — something seen; vision
Middle English
sighte
English, today
sight
From Middle English sighte, from Old English sihþ (“something seen; vision”), from Proto-West Germanic sihti (“seeing, sight”), equivalent to see + t. 2 Cognate with cim gazicht (“sight, vision; pupil”), Dutch gezicht (“face; sight, vision”), zicht (“sight, vision”), German Gesicht (“face; sight, vision”), Sicht (“view; sight; visibility”), lb Gesiicht (“face”), Siicht (“view; sight”), Yiddish געזיכט (“face”), Danish sigt (“sight; visibility”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk sikt (“visibility”), Swedish sikt (“visibility”), sikte (“sight”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA