descry

in a sentence

To the east the outflung arm of the mountains marched to a sudden end, and far lands could be descried beyond them, wide and vague.†  (source) J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954

In the flat smear of houses, he descried, or thought he did, the edge of his own on Ninth.†  (source) Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, 1934

Sometimes King Pellinore could be descried galloping over the purlieus after the Beast, or with the Beast after him if they happened to have got muddled up.†  (source) T. H. White, The Once and Future King, 1939

Then, in the gray shaded light of the room, he descried Bessie Gant, the nurse, and the long yellow skull's-head of Coker, smiling wearily at him, with big stained teeth, over a long chewed cigar.†  (source) Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, 1929

It was a chill morning, and a moist fog hung low in the valley, so it was difficult to descry exactly what was in the cart edging its slow way up the hill, with a slight figure behind, bent double, toiling under the load.†  (source) Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders, 2001

Upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields; the primaeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 1, 1835

And then, descrying as many as a half dozen people in the water in the distance, at once turning and retreating in the direction of the others in order to give the necessary signal.†  (source) Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy, 1925

When a faint beam Had to our doleful prison made its way, And in four countenances I descry'd The image of my own, on either hand Through agony I bit, and they who thought I did it through desire of feeding, rose O' th' sudden, and cried, 'Father, we should grieve Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav'st These weeds of miserable flesh we wear, And do thou strip them off from us again.'†  (source) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 1320

—you must retire yourself Into some covert; take your sweetheart's hat And pluck it o'er your brows, muffle your face, Dismantle you; and, as you can, disliken The truth of your own seeming; that you may,—For I do fear eyes over,—to shipboard Get undescried.†  (source) William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, 1610

Next she descried boot tracks the shape of which was so well-remembered that it shook her heart.†  (source) Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon, 1924

The shadows lay where they belonged, but strain as he might, he could not descry what lay in the darkest of them.†  (source) James Agee, A Death in the Family, 1957

But however this may be, there are certain epochs at which the changes that take place in the social and political constitution of nations are so slow and so insensible that men imagine their present condition to be a final state; and the human mind, believing itself to be firmly based upon certain foundations, does not extend its researches beyond the horizon which it descries.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 1, 1835

But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was no descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop.†  (source) George Eliot, Silas Marner, 1861