All 10 Uses of
discern
in
Moby Dick
- Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible.†
Chpt 31-33 *discernible = possible to notice or understand
- Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.†
Chpt 34-36undiscernible = not possible to notice or understandstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in undiscernible means not and reverses the meaning of discernible. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.†
Chpt 46-48discernible = possible to notice or understand
- There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.†
Chpt 49-51discerns = notices things that are not obvious
- But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being stark dead.†
Chpt 70-72discernible = possible to notice or understand
- Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the modifications of expression discernible therein.†
Chpt 79-81
- Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills.†
Chpt 79-81undiscernible = not possible to notice or understandstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in undiscernible means not and reverses the meaning of discernible. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals.†
Chpt 106-108discernible = possible to notice or understand
- Because in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea.†
Chpt 130-132discerned = noticed something that is not obvious
- Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.†
Chpt 130-132
Definition:
to notice or understand something -- often something that is not obvious