descry

In ancient Egypt, seekers after spiritual guidance could spend a night in incubation, which was a special institutionalised sleep undertaken in the temples of the gods precisely in order to descry meaning in the dark.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 15, 2018

What yonder twinkling azure orb do I descry?

From Washington Post ● Apr. 29, 2015

You will descry shades of H. Potter and of "Grimm," which this series predates.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 12, 2012

Was the distribution of shot times entirely random, or were there any local or global patterns to descry: longies with longies, middies alternating with shorties, etc.?

From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2010

Dimly through the mists they could descry the long arm of the mountains rising on their left.

From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien

Olimpia awakes, and, finding herself alone, hurries to the beach, and then ascends a rock, whence she descries, by light of the moon, the departing sail of her lover.

From History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Volume I by John Dunlop

He experienced a certain relief in its advent, as one who descries a familiar face in a foreign crowd.

From Notwithstanding by Mary Cholmondeley

Scanning the heights with a field-glass, one descries a man working on some jutting point or tiny patch of tillage so steep that a stone would hardly lie.

From Wild Spain (Espa?a agreste) Records of Sport with Rifle, Rod, and Gun, Natural History Exploration by Walter J. Buck

"An evil-minded man is quick to see his neighbor's faults, though small as mustard-seed; but when he turns his eyes towards his own, though large as Bilva fruit, he none descries."

From Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations of Antiquity Considering also their Origin and Meaning by T. W. Doane

As in search for Turnus he bent his glance this way and that round the separate ranks, he descries the city free from all this warfare, unpunished and unstirred.

From The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

Once the employer of 500 people, the mill is a keyhole through which most of Dundee’s history can be descried.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2022

Another witness descried their relationship as being "more like mother and daughter".

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2021

A truly fascinating man, Angleton was a devoted student of the matchless British literary critic William Empson, who descried, in the densely metaphoric poems of Donne and Shakespeare, patterns of subtle contradiction, self-reference, and ambiguity.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 26, 2019

Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2019

The six and twentieth day of April, about four o’clock in the morning, we descried the land of Virginia.

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone

My colleague Jessica Winter does have a helpful hint, though, for descrying Trump’s fanciest, sneakiest adviser:

From Slate ● May 2, 2017

Say you were descrying the future TV of 2000, 20 years ago.

From Time Magazine Archive

But instantly upon descrying us, they vanished deeper into the interior; and presently was heard a sepulchral chant, and many groans and grievous tribulations.

From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II by Herman Melville

On descrying the glint of his white sails these ships tacked and made off, confessing by the movement, though they showed no colours, that they represented an enemy.

From My Lords of Strogue Vol. III, (of III) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Lewis Wingfield

When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a distance of five hundred yards.

From Pioneers in Canada by E. Wallcousins