Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To catch sight of (something difficult to discern). synonym: see.
- transitive verb To discover by careful observation or scrutiny; detect.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Discovery; something discovered.
- To proclaim; announce; make known.
- To detect; find out; discover (anything concealed).
- To spy out; explore; examine by observation.
- To discover by vision; get a sight of; make out by looking: as, the lookout descried land.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete Discovery or view, as of an army seen at a distance.
- transitive verb To spy out or discover by the eye, as objects distant or obscure; to espy; to recognize; to discern; to discover.
- transitive verb rare To discover; to disclose; to reveal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To
see - verb transitive To notice carefully; to
detect
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb catch sight of
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Shakespeare 'descry' also occurs in the sense of 'to reconnoitre.'
Milton's Comus John Milton 1641
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From my window I could descry, at no great distance, a very ordinary mortal of a man, working industriously among his cabbages.
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By the glimmer of light lent me, I can but guess greatness and descry vagueness.
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If China, for example, tried a defendant after doing all this and then found them guilty and executed them, would we not descry this as another example of tyranny?
Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » My Problem with the KSM Trial 2009
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Then we head for high ground, and we all descry the steep walls to map a route upward.
Richard Bangs: Following Brad and Angelina to Namibia, Part I Richard Bangs 2011
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Barton a super-woman -- or at least they were personalities so designated by the cub book-reviewers, flat-floor men and women, and scholastically emasculated critics, who from across the dreary levels of their living can descry no glorious humans over-topping their horizons.
THE KANAKA SURF 2010
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Then we head for high ground, and we all descry the steep walls to map a route upward.
Richard Bangs: Following Brad and Angelina to Namibia, Part I Richard Bangs 2011
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He could descry objects enough at such times, but none correctly.
Weatherwatch: The snow's solemn stillness Tim Radford 2010
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I can understand why people spend entire lifetimes playing the Shakespeare game, that is trying to descry the human being behind the scintillant words: the densest exegesis is a passionate argument, to another Shakespeare lover, with the ghostly form on the other side of the curtain of time.
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For, be it known in advance, Lee Barton was a super-man and Ida Barton a super-woman -- or at least the were personalities so designated by the cub book reviewers, flat-floor men and women, and scholastically emasculated critics, who, from across the dreary levels of their living, can descry no glorious humans overtopping their horizons.
jword commented on the word descry
to discover by observation; to catch sight of
March 23, 2007