overview
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of overview
Explanation
An overview is a general summary of something. An overview gives the big picture, while leaving out the minor details. If you take a class on American history, the class will be an overview: it will sum up the most important events that have happened, such as famous elections, national disasters, major wars, and economic trends. When writing an overview, you have to leave out a lot of details, because you're focusing on major points. You can give an overview of a company's business, of a sport team's season, or even of your own life.
Vocabulary lists containing overview
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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"Creativity at Work" and "The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind"
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Talk Like Shakespeare Day, List 8
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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:
“We have asked repeatedly for not just a high-level overview of what happened that day, but for the details, the specific fully transparent details,” Nicole Dickey told NPR shortly after the lawsuit was filed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
Here's an overview of the coalition's resources and the role it can play in helping secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 2026
TikTok says it has identified the cause of AI overview errors and inconsistencies, without detailing what this was.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
I fed ChatGPT a brief overview of what I hoped to accomplish as an investor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 5, 2026
He gave viewers a basic overview of cell structure and cancer using diagrams and a long wooden pointer.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
However, many have said they've seen a drop in traffic since Google moved links to other sites down the search results page, with AI overviews displayed at the top instead.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2026
What’s more, marketing professionals are already studying how LLMs rank sources to ensure that their content is picked up in A.I. overviews.
From Slate ● Mar. 28, 2026
AI search engine Perplexity has been testing ads in the United States since 2024, while Google is also testing ads in the AI "overviews" its namesake search engine has been offering since last year.
From Barron's ● Feb. 15, 2026
County and nonprofit resources for mortgage relief, building estimates and overviews on the process.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2025
Interactive access is frequently used to do queries of NIC service overviews, look up user and host names, and scan lists of NIC documents.
From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet by Krol, Ed
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.
