sight-read

American

[sahyt-reed] / ˈsaɪtˌrid /

verb (used with or without object)

sight-read, sight-reading

to read, play, or sing without previous practice, rehearsal, or study of the material to be treated.

to sight-read music; to sight-read another language.

sight-read British

/ ˈsaɪtˌriːd /

verb

to sing or play (music in a printed or written form) without previous preparation

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of sight-read

First recorded in 1900–05

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.

I bought myself a piano, taught myself how to sight-read, which is how I started this album.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 26, 2023

In the last years of her life, when she had macular degeneration, it was sad because she could never sight-read in that same way that she could when I was a child.

From The New Yorker • Oct. 28, 2019

In “Yesterday Tomorrow,” from 2018, singers sight-read along as a computer gradually, in a different pattern each performance, transforms the score of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” into “Tomorrow,” from the musical “Annie.”

From New York Times • Sep. 25, 2019

“All the guys in the bands are super musicians who can sight-read anything you put in front of them.”

From Washington Post • Oct. 20, 2018

They could not help him sight-read a new tune from scratch.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023