spy
verb/spaɪ/
/spaɪ/
Verb Forms
Idioms Phrasal Verbs| present simple I / you / we / they spy | /spaɪ/ /spaɪ/ |
| he / she / it spies | /spaɪz/ /spaɪz/ |
| past simple spied | /spaɪd/ /spaɪd/ |
| past participle spied | /spaɪd/ /spaɪd/ |
| -ing form spying | /ˈspaɪɪŋ/ /ˈspaɪɪŋ/ |
- [intransitive] to collect secret information about another country, organization or person
- He spied for his government for more than ten years.
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- [transitive] spy somebody/something (literary or formal) to suddenly see or notice somebody/something
- In the distance we spied the Pacific for the first time.
Word OriginMiddle English: shortening of Old French espie ‘espying’, espier ‘espy’, of Germanic origin, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin specere ‘behold, look’.
Idioms
See spy in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionaryspy out the land
- to collect information before deciding what to do
Check pronunciation:
spy