Language Log

She was seeing at me

Yogi Berra is often quoted as saying "Sometimes you can observe a lot just by watching" (48,500 times on the web, according to Google). He's less often quoted as saying "Sometimes you can see a lot just by looking" (1,020 times on the web, according to Google).

Both versions of the epigram are based on the same two differences. In the first place, observing and seeing both imply some kind of psychological uptake that watching and looking don't. Thus you can say "I looked but I didn't see any problems", or "I was watching but I didn't observe any problems"; but you can't turn it around and say (in the same sense) "I saw but I didn't look at any problems", or "I observed but I didn't watch any problems". And in the second place, watching and looking imply some kind of choice or intent in allocating attention that seeing and observing don't. Thus it's normal to say "don't watch" or "don't look", but not "don't observe" or "don't see".

So it doesn't work to turn Yogi's quotes around: "Sometimes you can watch a lot just by observing", or "Sometimes you can look at a lot just by seeing". In the usual order, we can understand his remarks to mean "if you pay attention, you might learn something" -- if we turn them around, that interpretation is lost.

Lynn Johnston's wonderful comic strip For Better or For Worse, on 2/5/2008 and 2/6/2008, reminds us that kids can misunderstand such things in creative ways.

Robin's usage "... seeing at me" creatively combines the purposefulness of "look at" with the (distractingly intrusive) uptake of "see". At least, I think that's what he has in mind.

Posted by Mark Liberman at February 9, 2008 10:24 AM