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

From Chipping Norton, one can espy an extraordinary edifice, half-castle, half-factory, called the Bliss tweed mill.

From Time Magazine Archive

I did espy one couple who had obtained a turkey.

From Time Magazine Archive

She gave up straining to espy, past the apparently real, something denser.

From "Typical American" by Gish Jen

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

He espies the particular niche which suits him perfectly, and he calmly descends a few rungs of the ladder and steps off into oblivion.

From Aliens by McFee, William

From year to year fresh boughs appear—it waxes huge in size; And, with wild glee, this prodigy Sir Ranulph grim espies.

From Rookwood by Ainsworth, William Harrison

And if we pass from this profound knowledge of the objects to the empirical knowledge, to the external perception of bodies, it is in immense number that one espies around one traps laid by nature.

From The Mind and the Brain Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps by Binet, Alfred

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

Eventually, many months after that issue of Sports Illustrated had been consigned to the stacks, an editor espied the image again and thought it worth consideration.

From Slate ● May 22, 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

We came upon another detachment of rebels espied down a far street, obscured by smoke.

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

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

Once upon a time an eagle, scaling round a farmer’s barn, and espying a hare, darted down upon him like a sunbeam, seized him in his claws, and remounted with him into the air.

From Benjamin Franklin A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago American Pioneers and Patriots Series by Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)