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

This is the hour when children who play in the vicinity of the Connecticut Avenue bridge espy the huge old figure who chuckles with his stomach and is always willing to stop and say hello.

From Time Magazine Archive

They know that the other judges of the World Court are not filled with gladness when they espy the ruddy, oval face and trim white beard of John Bassett Moore.

From Time Magazine Archive

We could not espy Pomp, living or dead.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

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

Volscens is mad with rage, and nowhere espies the sender of the weapon, nor where to direct his fury.

From The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil

Terror-struck, he inquires whence it comes, and then espies the corpse.

From Oscar Wilde by Leonard Cresswell Ingleby

Thus shines the wretched butterfly, With iridescent wing doth flap When captured in a schoolboy's cap; Thus shakes the hare when suddenly She from the winter corn espies A sportsman who in covert lies.

From Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Henry Spalding

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 also misstated that Leifer’s editor espied the photo and submitted it to the “Pictures of the Year” contest.

From Slate ● May 29, 2015

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

When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly embrace and a moist kiss on the cheek.

From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

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

"Oh, look at this," cried the President, espying "Little Phil" Sheridan's gold-plated Winchester.

From Time Magazine Archive

Outside I turned to the left along a shady green alley fenced by hedges of yew, and espying the stable-yard before me, walked boldly across it.

From Shrewsbury A Romance by Stanley J. Weyman