overhears

verb

present tense third-person singular of overhear
as in hears
to listen to (another in private conversation) it's not polite to try to overhear intimate friends sharing confidences

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of overhears Nathan overhears a snippet of this exchange, which convinces him that Joe is engaged in an all-out smear campaign against him. — Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 1 Sep. 2026 At one point, Piker overhears his brother telling me about his old job as an aerospace engineer at Boeing. — Josh Eells, Rolling Stone, 9 Aug. 2026 Season 3 picks up after her boyfriend Alex Walter (Ashby Gentry) overhears Jackie and his brother Cole Walter (Noah LaLonde) confess their feelings for each other. — Kelly Allen, PEOPLE, 6 Aug. 2026 Mami overhears our conversation and gives us a crisp hundred-peso note, plasticky and purple. — Joseph Trinidad, Longreads, 16 June 2026 When Dickens overhears his son Baby chatting with Andersen during storytime, and the child’s painful stutter is gone, Dickens is grateful, at least temporarily, for Andersen’s presence. — Stuart Miller, Oc Register, 10 June 2026 An engineer overhears a sales call where a partner is requesting a specific feature and immediately huddles with the salesperson once the line clicks shut. — Vikram Joshi, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026 Rebekah overhears this plan and urges Jacob to disguise himself as Esau. — Charles Preston, Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Mar. 2026 Sophie overhears Anthony confront Benedict in the study, but Benedict puts up a solid argument that his brother, who has just returned from a trip to India with his wife Kate (Simone Ashley) and their son Edmund, hasn’t witnessed his planning and love for Sophie. — Dessi Gomez, Deadline, 26 Feb. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for overhears
  1. hears
  2. spies
  3. monitors
Verb
  • Deadline hears that organizers originally wanted CEO Neal Mohan, which would have been an exceptional booking.
    — Jesse Whittock, Deadline, 28 Aug. 2026
  • Kumi hears the downstream version of that in her applications.
    — Jasmine Browley, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2026
Definition of hears
Verb
  • Late one night, Clark spies what appears to be a sliver of light coming through a crack in the wall of the store’s basement.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 14 June 2026
  • In Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s The Finding of Moses, a dog spies a young girl whose presence unlocks the painting’s meaning.
    — Boris Kachka, The Atlantic, 5 June 2026
Definition of spies
Verb
  • Separately, Helena Maleno, founder of the migrant rights group Walking Borders, which monitors deaths and disappearances on migration routes to Spain, reported that 83 people had died on the voyage, including three women and a baby.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 3 Sep. 2026
  • Penn State researchers developed a wearable sensor that continuously monitors low rates of perspiration for lactate, a biomarker that can indicate oxygen starvation in tissues.
    — Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 2 Sep. 2026
Definition of monitors

Browse Nearby Words

overhearing
overhears
overheat
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Cite this Entry

“Overhears.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/overhears. Accessed 5 Sep. 2026.

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