Spy

How to spell spy

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spy

What does spy mean?

1. nounA person who secretly gathers information about a rival country, company, or group.
2. verbTo watch someone secretly, or to catch sight of something.

Spy in a sentence

• noun

  The captured spy refused to name the agency that recruited him.

• verb

  Neighbours began to spy on each other through the garden fence.

• noun

  During the war each side planted a spy inside the other's command.

• verb

  From the hilltop she could just spy the harbour in the distance.

Where does spy come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the 1200s from the Old French verb espier, meaning 'to watch' or 'to observe secretly', with the related noun espie standing for a watcher or scout. The French term itself was borrowed from a Germanic source, a Frankish word reconstructed as spehon, 'to spy out' or 'to look closely', and that family is ultimately connected to the same ancient root that gave Latin specere, 'to look at', the source of words like 'spectacle' and 'inspect'. English clipped the initial e- from espie to leave the short, blunt form 'spy', which is why the modern word looks so much smaller than its French ancestor. The military sense of a secret agent who gathers intelligence and the everyday sense of catching sight of something both grew naturally out of that core idea of watching closely. The word has stayed remarkably stable in spelling, so its only mild trap is the y standing in for the long i sound.

How the word is built

• spy (from Old French espier: to watch); single unanalysable root in modern English