spy
Americannoun
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spies
plural
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a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another, usually hostile, country, especially with reference to military or naval affairs.
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a person who keeps close and secret watch on the actions and words of another or others.
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a person who seeks to obtain confidential information about the activities, plans, methods, etc., of an organization or person, especially one who is employed for this purpose by a competitor.
an industrial spy.
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the act of spying.
verb (used without object)
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spies,
present (3rd person singular)
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spied,
past participle, past
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spying
present participle
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to observe secretively or furtively with hostile intent (often followed by on orupon ).
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to act as a spy; engage in espionage.
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to be on the lookout; keep watch.
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to search for or examine something closely or carefully.
verb (used with object)
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spies,
present (3rd person singular)
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spied,
past participle, past
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spying
present participle
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to catch sight of suddenly; espy; descry.
to spy a rare bird overhead.
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to discover or find out by observation or scrutiny (often followed byout ).
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to observe (a person, place, enemy, etc.) secretively or furtively with hostile intent.
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to inspect or examine or to search or look for closely or carefully.
noun
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a person employed by a state or institution to obtain secret information from rival countries, organizations, companies, etc
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a person who keeps secret watch on others
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obsolete a close view
verb
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to keep a secret or furtive watch (on)
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(intr) to engage in espionage
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(tr) to catch sight of; descry
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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spysimple
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spiessimple
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have spiedperfect
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has spiedperfect
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am spyingprogressive
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are spyingprogressive
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is spyingprogressive
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have been spyingperfect progressive
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has been spyingperfect progressive
Past
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spiedsimple
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had spiedperfect
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was spyingprogressive
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were spyingprogressive
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had been spyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of spy
First recorded in 1200–50; (for the verb) Middle English spien, shortened from espien, espyen “to espy” ( see espy); (for the noun) Middle English, shortened from espy “a spy,” from Old French espie
Explanation
To spy is to secretly watch someone. It’s not recommended unless you’re actually a spy, a person who is hired by a government or organization to keep tabs on enemies. You might imagine a spy working for the CIA or the KGB, but there are also military spies who infiltrate their opponents' armies to get information, commit sabotage, or steal technology. Private businesses sometimes employ spies as well, to collect information about competitors. As a verb, to spy is to do what a spy does—or simply to see something: "I spy brownies on the kitchen counter!"
Vocabulary lists containing spy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewellery, my purse, my gloves, everything. And just from creating that exterior for me, he gave me the sense of a spy lady."
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
South Korea's spy agency estimated last year that around 2,000 North Korean troops had been killed in the war, while a more recent assessment put the number killed or wounded at around 6,000.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
The spy - Southampton intern William Salt - is said to have parked at the golf club, then walked a couple of hundred yards down a road that leads to a raised area of ground.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
The arrest is one of the biggest scandals to engulf the spy agency since its creation in the mid-1950s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
Reporters followed her around at first, snapping photos of the wife of the famous spy pilot, before gradually losing interest.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
According to Reuters, some of the data contains details about officials' job assignments, including sensitive work against Chinese spies, Russian intelligence and drug cartels.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
That essentially meant that half the people sitting in a game-planning meeting were colleagues one moment—and potential spies the next.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Lyukshin was trained in "information warfare" by senior Russian spies and his details matched those of EL.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
Mr. Macintyre traces the lives of the two young spies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
When the G-men arrested spies and got hold of their code books, no one shared those books with Elizebeth—not even when her team had made the arrest possible.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
Bisignano, who also is the chief of Social Security, denied he ever spied on co-workers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
The man who runs the IRS spied on colleagues while working at JPMorgan.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 2026
Press reports have detailed how ByteDance’s China-based engineers accessed sensitive data of American users and spied on U.S. journalists.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
Then, somehow, through the sea of jerseys, Cormac's 14-year-old son spied somebody he recognised.
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2026
Cliffs rose eighty feet high on either side of the cove, but at the southwest corner they spied a rocky beach where they could haul out.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
A Royal Navy service member has been charged with spying for an unnamed foreign country, police have said.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
"The defendants were engaged in what is very obviously a form of spying," he added.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
In Taipei, Karen Kuo, a spokeswoman for Lai, called the alleged spying a “classic case of transnational repression.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
Berlin expelled a Russian diplomat in January after arresting a woman suspected of spying for Moscow.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
And if that’s not frustrating enough, magiciangirl18 is spying on me somehow?
From "Amari and the Night Brothers" by B.B. Alston
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
