descry – English verb conjugation

Nominal Forms

Infinitive: to descry
Participle: descried
Gerund: descrying

Cognates

-

Indicative

Subjunctive

Conditional

Imperative

you	descry
we	Let's descry
you	descry

Indicative

Conditional

Synonyms & Antonyms

Synonyms

to catch sight of something; to take notice (visually)

catch sight of, clock, decern, espy, goam, ken, make out, spot, spy

find

observe, scent, ascertain, disclose, notice, catch, identify, detect

Antonyms

find

lose, misplace, mislay, miss

Additional Information

Phrasal Verbs

Etymology

1. From Middle English descrien, descriven in the 14th century already had the dual sense of "to proclaim, announce, make known" and "to see, discern, discover". On the one hand, the Middle English word is a loan Old French descrier (“to proclaim, announce, cry”), from des- + crier (“shout, cry”); in this case, the word is a doublet of decry, which was loaned from the same French source in the 17th century.
2. Alternatively, as suggested by the spelling descriven, the Middle English word may be a contraction of Old French descrire, descrivre (“to describe”), from Latin describere, and thus a doublet of describe (so Palmer 1890, attributing the view to Walter William Skeat), but modern dictionaries more often seem to prefer the view that there was a secondary, folk-etymological influence on descrien by descriven within
3. Middle English (so The Century Dictionary 1911).
4. The semantic shift from "announce" to "discern, detect" is via "to cry out on discovering something that has been looked for".
5. Palmer (1890) compares the etymology of Latin explorare "to search a wood &c. with cries". See: Old French 'descrier'.

Sample Sentences