Definition of "descry"
descry
verb
third-person singular simple present descries, present participle descrying, simple past and past participle descried
(transitive) To announce a discovery: to disclose; to reveal.
Quotations
The kalender, […] hath late deſcry'd / That evill affected planet Mars, ally'd / To temporizing Mercury, conjoyn'd / I'th'houſe of Death; […]
a. 1645 (date written), Fra[ncis] Quarles, “Eglogue X”, in The Shepheards Oracles: Delivered in Certain Eglogues, London: […] M. F. for John Marriot and Richard Marriot, […], published 1645 (indicated as 1646), page 119
His Body was found almost naked in the field, for his Purple Robe he had thrown aside, lest it should descry him, unwilling to be found.
1670, John Milton, “The Second Book”, in The History of Britain, that Part Especially now Call’d England. […], London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for James Allestry, […] , page 87
(transitive) To see, especially from afar; to discover (a distant or obscure object) by the eye; to espy; to discern or detect.
Quotations
—Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks.
1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, page 151
Edmund, I thinke, is gone, / In pitty of his miſery, to diſpatch / His nighted life: Moreouer to deſcry / The ſtrength o’ th’ Enemy.
c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene v], page 302, column 1
When I had pass’d the Vale where my Bower stood as above, I came within View of the Sea, to the West, and it being a very clear Day, I fairly descry’d Land—whether an Island or a Continent, I could not tell; but it lay very high, extending from the West to the W.S.W. at a very great Distance;
1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], 3rd edition, London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], published 1719, page 127
Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days’ cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.
1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 47