- a person who tries to get secret information about another country, organization or person, especially somebody who is employed by a government or the police
- He was denounced as a foreign spy.
- a police spy
- a spy plane/satellite (= used to watch the activities of the enemy)
- Video spy cameras are being used in public places.
Extra ExamplesTopics War and conflictc1, Jobsc1- Counter-intelligence officers uncovered a spy ring involving twenty agents.
- He denied acting as an enemy spy.
- He was a spy for the government.
- Soviet spies who had infiltrated the American government
- the director of a top American spy agency
- He became a government spy during the war.
- He worked as a British spy in Russia.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- enemy
- foreign
- government
- …
- network
- act as
- be
- work as
- …
- infiltrate
- film
- movie
- novel
- …
- spy for
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’.
Check pronunciation:
spy