Pry
Verb
Etymology: from Middle English prien, which is of unknown origin. Walter Skeat wrote: it is merely the same word as Middle English piren (to peer)
Third-person singular simple present: he/she pries
Indicative past, past participle: pried
Present participle: prying.
Intransitively:
Definition: to look curiously, inquisitively or impertinently; this is, to peer scrutinizingly
Synonyms: to peer, spy
It may be approximately translated by mirar curiosamente, in Spanish; scrutare, in Italian; scruter, in French
[…] the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there.
Charles Dickens (Dombey and Son)
***With the preposition about, followed by a noun, designative of the place:
[…] as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings.
Kate Sweetser (Boys and girls from Thackeray)
One man came with the professed object of having a board painted with a device for some charitable institution. During the progress of its painting, he called several times with two or three persons […], who, while he was [… telling] directions about the execution of the design, busied themselves by prying about the place, asking questions.
Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine, vol. 6
***With the adverb about, to imply that the prier looks here and there:
Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards
Washington Irving (Tales of a Traveller)
While gazing on the landscape, my attention was suddenly arrested by a column of dense smoke which seemed to emerge from a cluster of trees behind a small house. […] I pried about in every direction to ascertain whence it proceeded.
Bentley’s Miscellany, vol. 17
The naval commander pried about in the forecastle, and under the run of the cabin, but nothing of what he sought was to be seen.
Walter Gibson (The Prison of Weltevreden)
[…] a soldier of the watch was going his rounds on the outside of the breastwork, listening, if perchance he might catch, as was not unusual, a portion of the conversation among the beleaguered burghers within. Prying about on every side, he at last discovered a chink in the wall, the result, doubtless, of the last cannonade, and hitherto overlooked.
John Motley (The Rise of the Dutch Republic)
***With the preposition at: (unusual syntax)
[The women] came about him like a swarm of bees, angry at first, humming a note like that of the telegraph wire on a mountain road, but, as he stood his ground, curiosity prevailed among them and they pried closely at him.
Maurice Hewlett (Lore of Proserpine)
***With the preposition into, followed by a noun, designative of the object of one’s attention:
Rose looked up and said, "I wonder Jacintha does not come; it is certainly past the hour;" and she pried into the room as if she expected to see Jacintha on the road.
Charles Reade (White Lies)
[The police-officer] deliberately searched the pockets of the coat which I had worn the evening before, then opened the drawers in the room, and even pried into the bed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (A Strange Story)
The blue-jay always pried into packages by pecking a hole in the wrapper and examining the contents through that.
Olive Miller (In Nesting Time)
Now, I am the most inquisitive of mankind. I feel that if I were a clerk in a bank, I 'd spend the day prying into every one's account, and learning the exact state of his balance-sheet.
Charles Lever (A Day's Ride)
[…] I roamed about the deck, prying into holes and corners, until the stevedores knocked off for dinner.
Frank T. Bullen (The Log of a Sea-Waif)
We are employed in going up Mountains, looking at strange towns, prying into old ruins and eating very hearty breakfasts.
John Keats (Letters of John Keats…)
"Liverpool," said one of its inhabitants to me, "is more like an American than an English city; it is new, bustling, and prosperous." I saw some evidences of this after I had got my baggage through the custom-house, which was attended with considerable delay, the officers prying very closely into the contents of certain packages which I was taking for friends of mine to their friends in England, cutting the packthread, breaking the seals, and tearing the wrappers without mercy.
William Bryant (Letters of a Traveller)
It is this truly feminine propensity which induces her continually to be prying into the cabinets of princes, listening at the key-holes of senate chambers, and peering through chinks and crannies.
Washington Irving (Knickerbocker's History of New York)
Extensively: pry into: to search inquisitively into (something learnable); to make an inquiry into (a fact, etc.)
As long as he was rich, none pried into his conduct.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Last Days of Pompeii)
Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into.
John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga)
While father and son were prying into his secrets, Raffles Haw had found his way to Elmdene, where Laura sat reading the Queen by the fire.
Arthur Doyle (The Doings of Raffles Haw)
We lived in a small town in Arkansas, where everyone knew each other and pried into what everyone else in the community was doing.
Michelle Lee (Secrets)
Extensively: pry out: to search; to find out by prying into something
