Verb

(en-verb)

To see.

To discover (a distant or obscure object) by the eye; to espy; to discern or detect.

* Shakespeare

Edmund, I think, is gone to descry / The strength o' the enemy.

* Milton

And now their way to earth they had descried .

* 1719 (Daniel Defoe), (Robinson Crusoe)

When I had passed the vale where my bower stood

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}

To discover; to disclose; to reveal.

* Milton

His purple robe he had thrown aside, lest it should descry him.

Verb

(en verb)

(obsolete) To remove the cover from; to uncover (a head, building etc.).

To expose, uncover.

:

(chess) To create by moving a piece out of another piece's line of attack.

:

(archaic) To reveal (information); to divulge, make known.

:

*Shakespeare

*:Go, draw aside the curtains, and discover / The several caskets to this noble prince.

*Francis Bacon

*:Prosperity doth best discover' vice; but adversity doth best ' discover virtue.

(obsolete) To reconnoitre, explore (an area).

*, Bk.V, ch.ix:

*:they seyde the same, and were aggreed that Sir Clegis, Sir Claryon, and Sir Clement the noble, that they sholde dyscover the woodys, bothe the dalys and the downys.

To find or learn something for the first time.

:

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Can China clean up fast enough? , passage=All this has led to an explosion of protest across China, including among a middle class that has discovered nimbyism.}}

(obsolete) To manifest without design; to show; to exhibit.

*C. J. Smith

*:The youth discovered a taste for sculpture.

*1806 , Alexander Hunter, Culina Famulatrix Medicinæ , p.125:

*:The English Cooks keep all their Spices in separate boxes, but the French Cooks make a spicey mixture that does not discover a predominancy of any one of the spices over the others.