discover

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To notice or learn, especially by making an effort: got home and discovered that the furnace wasn't working.
2. v. To be the first, or the first of one's group or kind, to find, learn of, or observe.
3. v. To learn about for the first time in one's experience: discovered a new restaurant on the west side.
4. v. To learn something about: discovered him to be an impostor; discovered the brake to be defective.
5. v. To identify (a person) as a potentially prominent performer: a movie star who was discovered in a drugstore by a producer.
6. v. Archaic To reveal or expose.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. . To uncover; lay open to view; disclose; make visible; hence, to show.
2. To exhibit; allow to be seen and known; act so as to manifest (unconsciously or unin-tentionally); betray: as, to discover a generous spirit; he discovered great confusion.
3. To make known by speech; tell; reveal.
4. To gain a sight of, especially for the first time or after a period of concealment; espy: as, land was discovered on the lee bow.
5. Hence To gain the first knowledgeof; find out, as something that was before entirely unknown, either to men in general, to the finder, or to persons concerned: as, Columbus discovered the new world; Newton discovered the law of gravitation; we often discover our mistakes when too late.
6. . To explore; bring to light by examination.
7. . To cause to cease to be a covering; make to be no longer a cover.
8. =Syn. 3.. To communicate, impart.
9. To descry, discern, behold.
10. Discover, invent, agree in signifying to find out; but we discover what already exists, though to us unknown; we invent what did not before exist: as, to discover the applicability of steam to the purposes of locomotion, and to invent, the machinery necessary to use steam for these ends. (See invention.) Some things are of so mixed a character that either word may be applied to them.
11. To uncover; unmask one's self.
12. To explore.

Wiktionary

1. v. To remove the cover from; to uncover (a head, building etc.).
2. v. To expose, uncover.
3. v. To create by moving a piece out of another piece's line of attack.
4. v. To reveal (information); to divulge, make known.
5. v. To reconnoitre, explore (an area).
6. v. To find something for the first time.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To uncover.
2. v. To disclose; to lay open to view; to make visible; to reveal; to make known; to show (what has been secret, unseen, or unknown).
3. v. To obtain for the first time sight or knowledge of, as of a thing existing already, but not perceived or known; to find; to ascertain; to espy; to detect.
4. v. To manifest without design; to show.
5. v. To explore; to examine.
6. v. To discover or show one's self.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. find unexpectedly
2. v. make a discovery
3. v. get to know or become aware of, usually accidentally
4. v. discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of
5. v. identify as in botany or biology, for example
6. v. see for the first time; make a discovery
7. v. make known to the public information that was previously known only to a few people or that was meant to be kept a secret
8. v. make a discovery, make a new finding