the.com/overlook

The spot where you see everything except the guardrail you definitely needed.

means To overlook is either to fail to notice or to deliberately let something slide, or—as a noun—a high vantage point that offers a sweeping view.

from A straightforward English compound of "over" plus "look," built from the same Germanic roots that gave us those everyday words. The double life is its charm: to look over something can mean to scan it carefully, yet to overlook it means to miss it entirely—the same gesture from above either catching everything or skipping right past it. The scenic-vantage "overlook" came later, an American flavoring of the older verb, naming the place where all that looking-over physically happens.

two meanings
To miss something or to gaze upon everything
scenic engineering
Roadside overlooks are deliberately built distractions
the shining
Kubrick's haunted hotel was named the Overlook
word origin
Once meant to inspect from above, not ignore
selfie hazard
Overlooks rank among parks' deadliest photo spots
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