descry

“Since sunrise I have been turning my spy glass in every direction,” she wrote to her sister in a long letter begun the night before, “watching with unwearied anxiety, hoping to discern the approach of my dear husband and his friends; but, alas, I can descry only groups of military wandering in all directions, as if there was a lack of arms, or of spirit to fight for their own firesides!”

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.

The reader is similarly invited to descry herself in Chung’s story—to conceive of herself as a kindred spirit.

Ideally, just putting our research out there should be enough for people to descry our brilliance and promote it accordingly.

We stood side by side there in the near-dark; I could descry the fear in his eyes, the discomfort in the mouth.