Other forms: supervisors
Your supervisor is the person directly above you at work — the one who sets the rota, signs your holiday form and notices when you come in late. Not the head of the whole company; the one on the floor with you.
In a factory, a warehouse or a call centre, the supervisor runs a shift or a small team and answers to a manager above. At a university the word means something else: your supervisor is the academic who guides your thesis, reads your drafts and tells you the second chapter has to go. The verb is supervise and the activity is supervision — children under supervision, an exam supervised by two staff. It is the paperwork word: people say 'my boss' in the pub and 'my supervisor' in an email to HR. In parts of the United States a Board of Supervisors is an elected county council, which catches British readers out.
1nounsupervisorThe person who directs and checks your day-to-day work.~92%
“Ask your supervisor before you swap shifts.”
2nounacademicAn academic who guides a student's research and reads their drafts.~8%
“Her supervisor suggested cutting the second chapter.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 24 sentences found in the wild and placed 24 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
supervisor is a workplace role.
Also accepted in games: boss, manager
Latin supervīsor comes from supervideō — super, 'over', plus videō, 'see'. A supervisor is the one who looks over your work, and English later built the plainer word overseer out of exactly the same two pieces.
Latin
supervīsor
Middle English
supervisor
English, today
supervisor
Attested since the 15th century; from Middle English supervisor, supervisour, supervysor, supervysour, from Latin supervīsor, from supervideō, in turn from super + videō. by surface analysis, supervise + -or.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA