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Word of the Day Archive
Saturday February 5, 2000

espy \ih-SPY\, transitive verb:
To catch sight of; to perceive with the eyes; to discover, as a distant object partly concealed, or not obvious to notice; to see at a glance; to discern unexpectedly; to spy; as, to espy land; to espy a man in a crowd.

The seamen espied a rock within half a cable's length of the ship.
-- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

They espy no trouble in that.
-- John Lukacs, A Thread of Years

Espy is from Old French espier, to watch, ultimately of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German spehon. The act of espying is espial.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for espy

 

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