descry

In ancient Egypt, seekers after spiritual guidance could spend a night in incubation, which was a special institutionalised sleep undertaken in the temples of the gods precisely in order to descry meaning in the dark.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 15, 2018

What yonder twinkling azure orb do I descry?

From Washington Post ● Apr. 29, 2015

You will descry shades of H. Potter and of "Grimm," which this series predates.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 12, 2012

Was the distribution of shot times entirely random, or were there any local or global patterns to descry: longies with longies, middies alternating with shorties, etc.?

From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2010

We stood side by side there in the near-dark; I could descry the fear in his eyes, the discomfort in the mouth.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

One of them descries an angry face—Alberich's—floating before her; another becomes aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil.

From The Wagnerian Romances by Gertrude Hall Brownell

Thus, when the trembling hare descries the hounds, She from her whinny mansion swiftly bounds; O'er hills and fields she scours, outstrips the wind; The hounds and huntsmen follow far behind.

From Poems on Golf by Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society

The huntsman hears the rustling noise, And through half-eaten leaves descries His branching horns, the pack recalls, And merited the creature falls To his ingratitude a prey.

From Aesop, in Rhyme Old Friends in a New Dress by Marmaduke Park

He flies swifter than the wind, when once he descries a strange hilt in his weaponless hand.

From The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

Yet he, who from the shore the wreck descries, May lawfully enrich him with the prize.

From Dryden's Works Vol. 3 (of 18) Sir Martin Mar-All; The Tempest; An Evening's Love; Tyrannic Love by John Dryden

Once the employer of 500 people, the mill is a keyhole through which most of Dundee’s history can be descried.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2022

Another witness descried their relationship as being "more like mother and daughter".

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2021

A truly fascinating man, Angleton was a devoted student of the matchless British literary critic William Empson, who descried, in the densely metaphoric poems of Donne and Shakespeare, patterns of subtle contradiction, self-reference, and ambiguity.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 26, 2019

Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2019

The six and twentieth day of April, about four o’clock in the morning, we descried the land of Virginia.

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone

My colleague Jessica Winter does have a helpful hint, though, for descrying Trump’s fanciest, sneakiest adviser:

From Slate ● May 2, 2017

Say you were descrying the future TV of 2000, 20 years ago.

From Time Magazine Archive

They soon felt the magnetic attraction of the Blue Hills of Milton, and, descrying from their summit the distant mountains north of Worcester, made a pedestrian excursion thither the following day.

From Albert Gallatin American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII by John Austin Stevens

"Where's mine pipe?" he asked, looking around in the vain hope of descrying it somewhere upon the ground.

From Oonomoo the Huron by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Through fields of ether and fleecy clouds he journeyed many a mile, descrying, like Sancho Panza on his clavileno, the earth far distant below him, and no bigger than a nut-shell.

From Legends of the North; The Guidman O' Inglismill and The Fairy Bride by Patrick Buchan