DESCRY

Where it comes from

From Middle English descrien, descriven in the 14th century already had the dual sense of "to proclaim, announce, make known" and "to see, discern, discover". On the one hand, the Middle English word is a loan Old French descrier (“to proclaim, announce, cry”), from des- + crier (“shout, cry”); in this case, the word is a doublet of decry, which was loaned from the same French source in the 17th century. Alternatively, as suggested by the spelling descriven, the Middle English word may be a contraction of Old French descrire, descrivre (“to describe”), from Latin describere, and thus a doublet of describe (so Palmer 1890, attributing the view to Walter William Skeat), but modern dictionaries more often seem to prefer the view that there was a secondary, folk-etymological influence on descrien by descriven within Middle English (so The Century Dictionary 1911). The semantic shift from "announce" to "discern, detect" is via "to cry out on discovering something that has been looked for". Palmer (1890) compares the etymology of Latin explorare "to search a wood &c. with cries".

Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).

DESCRY in OUTLIER

Players have found it on 22 boards so far. 37 players have found it across Outlier's history.

It first turned up on Day 48, 7 July 2026. The most recent board was Day 108, 5 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 1 day.

Built from these letters

DESCRY starts with D and ends with Y. Sorted, its letters read CDERSY - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.

Same letters, different word

2 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.

Words that start DESCRY

Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.

Also seen on Day 48