eyewitness
Americannoun
-
eyewitnesses
plural
verb (used with object)
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of eyewitness
Explanation
An eyewitness is an observer who's seen something clearly enough to describe it. If you're an eyewitness to a car accident, the police might want to ask you exactly what you saw. An eyewitness is valuable to crime investigators because she has seen the incident happen with her own eyes. You could also be an eyewitness to something less serious, like a boy being mean to his younger brother when he thinks no one is watching, or a woman throwing her soda can on the ground. While a witness may have valuable information about something, an eyewitness is even more important because he has actually seen — or witnessed — the event in question.
Vocabulary lists containing eyewitness
myPerspectives 9.3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Travis, the getaway driver, did, however; his eyewitness account was arguably the most damaging.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
Community groups on Facebook are filled with eyewitness reports of crimes taking place almost daily, fuelling anger and questions about why no-one seems to be able to put to a stop to it.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
While he was not an eyewitness to the shooting itself, he offered context about the feuds and rivalries that led up to it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026
This led to a deeper look into other factors contributing to wrongful convictions, including prosecutorial misconduct and mistaken eyewitness identifications, especially those made by witnesses with different racial backgrounds from the suspects.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2026
After the fact, eyewitness testimony became a form of virtual witnessing, hence Boyle’s insistence that he did not appeal ‘to other Writers as to Judges, but as to Witnesses’.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Some survivors of the deadly floods on the Nepal-China border ran for their lives, others narrowly missed disaster, but all were eyewitnesses to a major calamity and its aftermath.
From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026
After an interim CEO was appointed, OpenAI executives learned from multiple eyewitnesses that Aschenbrenner had appeared to welcome Altman’s replacement, according to the people familiar with the matter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Several eyewitnesses have claimed duty staff were not around.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
But ICE has provided no proof, and in Araujo’s case, eyewitnesses say the agency is lying about what happened.
From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2026
He had no clues or leads, no evidence or eyewitnesses.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
