There has been a lot of ranting and raving in the Australian papers recently by Peter Ryan, Commissioner for NSW Police, about the number of organisations and committees that he has to make reports to. I was struck by a particular complaint he made - 'I get oversighted by people who haven't got a bloody clue.'

Point one: unbelievably revolting verbing of a noun!

More significantly, this set me thinking about a group of related words.

1. to oversee - to supervise or look after, implying a requirement to pay close attention to
2. to overlook - to forget, miss out, not pay close attention to
3. oversight - the act of overlooking something.

Wha-at? Does anyone else think this doesn't make sense? To me, seeing and sight are closely linked, but here, they are used in compound words with diametrically opposite meanings. Anyone know why or how? Anyone have any other examples like this?