Vista
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through some opening, avenue or passage.
"The sun soon broke forth from that one dark cloud, gradually melting into light; and the sunbeams and the glittering rain went driving together through the forest glades—those long vistas, of which the slender deer seemed the sole habitants."
- 2 the visual percept of a region wordnet
- 3 A site offering such a view.
- 4 A vision; a view presented to the mind in prospect or in retrospect by the imagination. figuratively
"a vista of pleasure to come"
- 1 To make a vista or landscape of. transitive
"The night had now closed in, and its darkness was only relieved by the wan lamps that vistaed the streets, and a few dim stars that struggled through the reeking haze that curtained the great city."
- 1 A city in San Diego County, California, United States.
- 2 Ellipsis of Windows Vista. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
Example
More examples"The street, lined with trees, provided a vista of the sea."
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian vista (“view, sight”), from visto, past participle of vedere (“to see”), from Latin vidēre (“to see”). Compare vision, video, visa.
From Spanish vista (“view”). One settler in the Vista area, John A. Frazier, applied to open the first post office and after several attempts to name the city (Frazier and Buena Vista were already taken), Frazier finally chose the name Vista.
From vista.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.