discern Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. verb detect with the senses
    recognize; spot; make out; tell apart; recognise; distinguish; pick out.
    • The fleeing convicts were picked out of the darkness by the watchful prison guards
    • I can't make out the faces in this photograph

WordNet


Dis*cern" transitive verb
Etymology
F. discerner, L. discernere, discretum; dis- + cernere to separate, distinguish. See Certain, and cf. Discreet.
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Discerned ; present participle & verbal noun Discerning
Definitions
  1. To see and identify by noting a difference or differences; to note the distinctive character of; to discriminate; to distinguish.
    To discern such buds as are fit to produce blossoms. Boyle.
    A counterfeit stone which thine eye can not discern from a right stone. Robynson (More's Utopia).
  2. To see by the eye or by the understanding; to perceive and recognize; as, to discern a difference.
    And [I] beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding. Prov. vii. 7.
    Our unassisted sight . . . is not acute enough to discern the minute texture of visible objects. Beattie.
    I wake, and I discern the truth. Tennyson.
    Syn. -- To perceive; distinguish; discover; penetrate; discriminate; espy; descry; detect. See Perceive.
Dis*cern" intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To see or understand the difference; to make distinction; as, to discern between good and evil, truth and falsehood.
    More than sixscore thousand that cannot discern between their right hand their left. Jonah iv. 11.
  2. To make cognizance. Obs. Bacon.

Webster 1913