Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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verb
To announce a discovery: to disclose; to reveal.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: literary, transitive
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
verb
To see, especially from afar; to discover (a distant or obscure object) by the eye; to espy; to discern or detect.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: literary, transitive
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
verb
catch sight of
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: spot, espy, spy
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: spy, sight
History
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. 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 Middle English (so The Century Dictionary 1911). The semantic shift from "announce" to "discern, detect" is via "to cry out on discovering something that has been looked for". Palmer (1890) compares the etymology of Latin explorare "to search a wood &c. with cries".
Across languages
21 source translations are retained for this English entry.
