surveil

American  

[ser-veyl] / sərˈveɪl /

verb (used with object)

surveilled, surveilling

1. to place under surveillance.

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surveil British  

/ sɜːˈveɪl /

verb

1. to observe closely the activities of (a person or group)

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Etymology

Origin of surveil

First recorded in 1965–70; back formation from surveillance

Explanation

To surveil is to spy on someone, the way a television private eye sits in her car and uses binoculars to surveil the show's villain. The noun surveillance came first, from the French surveiller, "to oversee or watch." If you were to surveil someone, you'd keep a close eye on them, monitoring everything they do. These days, that means keeping track of their online activity as well as their phone calls and physical movement. It's usually authority and governmental figures doing the surveillance — although if a company wants to sell you something, they just might surveil your internet history.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

surveil surveilled surveilling

Marshals started to surveil the apartment building Tuesday and, around 8 p.m., knocked on the apartment door, Clark said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026

A joint statement said the new project would see "cutting edge payloads and enabling systems" developed for UUVs which could protect seabed infrastructure, conduct strikes, surveil and do reconnaissance, and conduct logistics operations.

From BBC ● May 30, 2026

Anthropic doesn’t want its products used to surveil Americans or create autonomous machines of war.

From Slate ● Feb. 27, 2026

They are just data brokers doing business, they say, and it’s not their fault if what they gather and sell is used to subdue and surveil people.

From Salon ● Feb. 20, 2026

The document outlines the myriad ways the country’s security agents would try to surveil, entrap, compromise and recruit American visitors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 2025

“People were being surveilled by the FBI, and they’d pay family members or people they knew to survey them.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026

Students are going back to the most surveilled campuses in American history.

From Slate ● Aug. 21, 2026

But police departments were wary of being constantly surveilled.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026

A UK Border Force officer surveilled and investigated Chinese citizens in Britain as part of a "shadow policing operation" with its "tentacles" reaching from Hong Kong, a court has heard.

From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2026

I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.

From Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

They’re not surveilling their readers or mining their data.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2026

He spoke as cheers echoed off the skyscrapers dotted around the World Trade Center, where Knicks gathered alongside National Guard troops surveilling the area.

From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026

“We have overhead assets that have been surveilling the area, so there’s some idea what the surface looks like.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

In the most technical sense, none of this violates the red lines that Amodei outlined around surveilling Americans or allowing its tech to power fully autonomous killing machines.

From Slate ● Mar. 3, 2026

“They’re watching us in here, too? Are we allowed to use the bathroom privately, or are they surveilling our bodily functions as well?”

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed