Verb

(en verb)

To detect with the senses, especially with the eyes.

* {{quote-book

, year=1875 , author=Jules Verne , title=The Survivors of the Chancellor , chapter=1 citation , passage=Meanwhile the brig had altered her tack, and was moving slowly to the east. Three hours later and the keenest eye could not have discerned her top-sails above the horizon.}}

To perceive, recognize, or comprehend with the mind; to descry.

* {{quote-book

, year=1842 , author=Charles Dickens , title=American Notes for General Circulation citation , passage=If they discern' any evidences of wrong-going in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they ' discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken.}}

To distinguish something as being different from something else; to differentiate.

* {{quote-book

, year=1651 , author=Thomas Hobbes , title=Leviathan citation , passage=The severity of judgement, they say, makes men censorious and unapt to pardon the errors and infirmities of other men: and on the other side, celerity of fancy makes the thoughts less steady than is necessary to discern exactly between right and wrong.}}

He was too young to discern right from wrong.

To perceive differences.

Verb

(scrutinis)

To examine something with great care.

* 2005 , (Plato), Sophist . Translation by Lesley Brown. .

Because his opinions are all over the place, they find it easy to scrutinise them and lay them out;

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.}}

To audit accounts etc in order to verify them.