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spy

Pronunciation: /spaɪ/

The English word “spy” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A person who secretly watches and examines the actions of other individuals or organizations and gathers information on them (usually to gain an advantage).
  2. A defensive player assigned to cover an offensive backfield player man-to-man when they are expected to engage in a running play, but the offensive player does not run with the ball immediately.

verb

  1. To act as a spy.
  2. To spot; to catch sight of; to espy.
  3. To search narrowly; to scrutinize.
  4. To explore; to see; to view; inspect and examine secretly, as a country.

Etymology

From Middle English spien, aphetic variant of earlier espien (“to espy”), from Old French espier (“to spy”), from Frankish *spehōn (“to spy”), from Proto-Germanic *spehōną (“to see, look”), from Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- (“to look”). Akin to German spähen (“to spy”), Dutch spieden (“to spy”). The noun displaced native Old English sċēawere (literally “watcher”), which was also the word for…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.