Origin: Germanic Old English prefix
Overlooked has 3 different meanings across 1 category:
simple past tense and past participle of overlook
"The manager overlooked the typo in the report, but it was later caught by a colleague."
In plain English: To overlook something means to fail to notice it because you didn't look closely enough.
"The manager overlooked our suggestion because he was too busy with other tasks."
Missed, unnoticed.
"The small error in the report was overlooked during the initial review."
The word overlook combines the prefix over- with the past tense of look, creating a term that literally means to look from above or beyond something. It entered English as a straightforward compound phrase describing the physical act of surveying an area from a higher vantage point.