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.

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(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.

Verb

(en verb)

(obsolete) To spread out, to unfurl.

* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.v:

The wearie Traueiler, wandring that way, / Therein did often quench his thristy heat, / And then by it his wearie limbes display , / Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget / His former paine [...].

To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […].}}

To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.

(Shakespeare)

(military) To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line.

(Farrow)

(printing, dated) To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.

(obsolete) To discover; to descry.

* Chapman

And from his seat took pleasure to display / The city so adorned with towers.