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

From Chipping Norton, one can espy an extraordinary edifice, half-castle, half-factory, called the Bliss tweed mill.

From Time Magazine Archive

I did espy one couple who had obtained a turkey.

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

But most of all, his Mother dear, She who had fainted with her fear, Rejoiced when waking she espies The Child; when she can trust her eyes,       And touches the blind Boy.

From Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 by Shairp, John Campbell

When darkness has fallen, out comes the ghost and prowling about espies the heap of yams and taro.

From The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) The Belief Among the Aborigines of Australia, the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia by Frazer, James George, Sir

He peeps in around the door and espies Mrs. Starkweather.

From Theft A Play In Four Acts by London, Jack

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

I espied much mint and seafoam, a lot of grass and Astroturf, some lime and spinach-leaf and haricot vert and Shamrock Shakes shades.

From Slate ● Jun. 26, 2013

In the dimness of its dreary day few things even in that land of vigilance could have espied them, save from close at hand.

From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien

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

Flush with unaccustomed cash and astute at espying loopholes in the law's vigilance, he rambled across the country using a collection of aliases.

From Time Magazine Archive

And her majesty, espying it, wrote underneath,— "If thy heart fail thee, wherefore climb at all?"

From Oregon and Eldorado or, Romance of the Rivers by Bulfinch, Thomas