a bird's-eye view

a bird's eye view

1. A view looking down at an object or area from a high elevation (as if from the perspective of a bird in flight). From up here you can get a bird's eye view of the entire campus.2. A consideration of a problem or situation from a comprehensive perspective. In order to determine why the company was headed towards a fiscal disaster, the CFO had to take a step back and get a bird's eye view of the situation so he could locate the cause of the problem.See also: eye, view

a bird's-eye view

1. If you have a bird's-eye view of a place, you are looking down on it from a high position and can see all of it. His pilot's licence enabled us to have a bird's-eye view of the beautiful countryside.2. If you have a bird's-eye view of a situation, you know what is happening in all the parts of it. I was a parliamentary journalist, so I had a bird's eye view of the way politicians encourage people to believe in dreams. Note: People often change bird to a word that is relevant to what they are talking about. He seems to have a soldier's eye view. He has a child's eye view of the war based on his own experiences. Compare with a worm's eye view.See also: view

a bird's-eye view

a general view from above.See also: view

—'s-eye view

a view from the position or standpoint of the person or thing specified. The most common versions of this phrase are bird's-eye view (see bird) and worm's-eye view (see worm). 1982 Ian Hamilton Robert Lowell There is a kind of double vision: the child's eye view judged and interpreted by the ironical narrator.

a ˌbird’s-eye ˈview (of something)

a good view of something from high above: From the church tower you get a bird’s-eye view of the town.See also: view

bird's-eye view, a

An overall view, the large picture. The term dates from about 1600 and not only means “panoramic” but also may imply a somewhat superficial picture. Thus a “bird’s-eye view” of music history, for example, may try to cover five hundred years of musical composition in a one-semester course. A 1989 New York Times headline, “Human-Eye View,” announcing a special tour of a natural history museum’s ornithology collection, gave this cliché a new twist.