observe

Verb

Plain form
observe

Third-person singular
observes

Past tense
observed

Past participle
observed

Present participle
observing

Observe is on the Academic Vocabulary List.

(transitive & intransitive) If you observe something, you see or notice it.
No problem behavior was observed among these students.

My goal is to record what I observe during one session.

A similar pattern was also observed in the posttest data.
(transitive & intransitive) If you observe something, you watch it carefully.
The moon is really too bright to observe through a telescope.

He spent hours closely observing the weather and making careful notes.
(transitive); (formal) If you observe something, usually a fact, you say or write it.
When we were talking, he also observed that some new problems had come up.
(transitive) If you observe a law or agreement, you follow it.
Israel agreed to start moving out of West Bank towns if the Palestinians observed a cease-fire.
(transitive) If you observe a special day, you do the traditional things that are done on that day, especially in a religion.
Some 1 billion people around the world will do something to observe the anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970.

At a tent city on the outskirts of Islamabad in Pakistan, families observed the end of Ramadan by donating gifts to the earthquake survivors.

The patient may be asked to observe some taboo, such as not having sex on a particular day.