noun, verb
noun (plural spies) a person who tries to get secret information about another country, organization, or person, especially sb who is employed by a government or the police:
a government / police spy * He worked as a British spy in Russia. * a spy plane / satellite (= used to watch the activities of the enemy) * a spy ring * Video spy cameras are being used in public places.
verb (spies, spying, spied, spied)
1 [V] to collect secret information about another country, organization or person:
He spied for his government for more than ten years.
2 [VN] (literary or formal) to suddenly see or notice sb/sth:
In the distance we spied the Pacific for the first time.
IDIOMS
spy out the land to collect information before deciding what to do
PHRASALVERBS
spy on sb/sth to watch sb/sth secretly:
Have you been spying on me?
spy sth<->out to get information about sth
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for spy is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does spy appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — spy appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
