espy

And sympathy for the people whom we espy is born out of that complicity, a compassion that stems from the false sense that we are observing people’s most private moments without permission, undetected.

From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2015

A traveller upon the sea she fared, fleeting on with foam about her throat over the waves, over the ocean-streams with wreathéd prow, until they might espy the Geatish cliffs and headlands that they knew.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 2, 2014

I did espy one couple who had obtained a turkey.

From Time Magazine Archive

This is the hour when children who play in the vicinity of the Connecticut Avenue bridge espy the huge old figure who chuckles with his stomach and is always willing to stop and say hello.

From Time Magazine Archive

She gave up straining to espy, past the apparently real, something denser.

From "Typical American" by Gish Jen

A man who stops for gas a sign espies That says a dog out back has quite a knack.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 3, 2020

Behind peppy songs like “Singin’ in the Rain”  and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” Mr. Mac espies a frantic need to forget those horrors.

From New York Times ● Jan. 14, 2015

If he espies a tempting morsel he drops like a stone, and alights on a spot almost exactly below him—a power which few birds seem to possess.

From Wild Life in a Southern County by Richard Jefferies

Now, from the stern, the Dardans he espies, Hemmed in their camp.

From The Æneid of Virgil Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor by Edward Fairfax Taylor

At this moment, however, the leader espies a small tuft of grass on the face of the desert, and, reasoning that water must be flowing somewhere underneath, inspires his exhausted followers to new exertions.

From The Moral Instruction of Children by Felix Adler

Leave it to van Gogh to turn a tree he espied in the landscape into a profound mystery, bringing new life to an ancient symbol.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2023

Discerning blurry outlines in Himalayan mountain zones, gullible visitors uttered: “Just look! We’ve finally espied proof! The abominable snowman eXists!”

From Washington Post ● Nov. 23, 2022

As opposed to when I espied Mr. McConnell on my flight in yesterday, now he is dressed to the nines, as befits both his home state and the event.

From Washington Times ● May 10, 2017

He in the house espied there many a man asleep, a throng of kinsmen side by side, and band of youthful knights.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 2, 2014

When he espied Jon Snow, Axell Florent tossed a bone aside, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sauntered over.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

The couple got into rare books quite by accident, recalled David Bauman, a gentle, soft-spoken man in his 70s, after espying some at Freeman, the auction house in Philadelphia where they lived as newlyweds.

From New York Times ● Jan. 30, 2019

The third moral outrage I imagine the future espying is our cruelty to the ill and aged in our fetish for surgical intervention.

From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2016

Only John Melia, a spokesman for Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America, the union representing the locked-out workers, grows impassioned, in the manner of a kamikaze pilot espying a large aircraft carrier.

From New York Times ● Jul. 24, 2012

"Oh, look at this," cried the President, espying "Little Phil" Sheridan's gold-plated Winchester.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write, 'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.'"

From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by John Bartlett