Literary notes about Discern (AI summary)
The term “discern” is employed by many authors as a means of articulating both acute sensory perception and deeper intellectual or moral insight. In some works, it denotes the capacity to visually distinguish details in a landscape or setting—instances where one might perceive a distant river or subtle variation in light ([1], [2])—while in others it points to an inner ability to understand character or intention, as when an individual registers nuances in speech or behavior ([3], [4]). The word thus bridges the literal act of seeing with the metaphorical process of recognition in human affairs, used as much to denote the act of distinguishing shades of truth or emotion as to highlight the limits of perception itself ([5], [6]).
- The view was forming at last; she could discern the river, the golden plain, other hills.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - Above it he could just discern the pinnacled tower of Trinity Church.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy - This I could discern by the studied hair-splitting farrago of his rejoinder.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler’s white face.
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - More, however, Chichikov could not discern, for his eyelids were as heavy as though smeared with treacle.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol - My ignorance will better excuse me in that I understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne
