Other forms: discovered, discovers, discovering
To discover something is to find it when nobody knew it was there. A team discovers a new drug, a child discovers a nest in the hedge, you discover a twenty-pound note in the pocket of an old coat.
It works for facts as much as for things: you discover that the shop shuts at four, that your neighbour speaks Greek, that the ticket was never booked. It takes THAT, or a question word — discover why, discover how, discover what happened. The noun is discovery and the person is a discoverer. Keep it apart from invent: you discover what already exists and invent what did not, so a coastline is discovered and a telephone is invented. In its oldest use it simply meant to uncover, which is exactly what its parts still say.
1verbdiscoverTo find something that was not known about before.
“They discovered a Roman floor under the car park.”
synonyms: find, uncover
2verblearnTo learn a fact you did not know.
“She discovered that the flat had been sold months ago.”
3verbgoodTo come across something good by chance.
“We discovered a small bakery two streets from the hotel.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Discover is dis- plus cover: to un-cover. It came through Middle English discoveren and Old French descovrir from Latin discooperīre, which meant taking the covering off a thing. English already had its own word for this, onfindan, and dropped it for the French one. When you discover a planet, you are, in the word's own terms, lifting the lid off it.
Old French
descovrir
Middle English
discoveren
English, today
discover
From Middle English discoveren, from Old French descovrir. From Middle English discoveren, from Old French descovrir, from Latin discoperīre < discooperiō, from Latin dis- + cooperiō. Displaced native onfindan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA