SPYING • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Spying

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/spˈaɪɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Spy v. t. (past & past part. spied; pres. part. spying)

To gain sight of; to discover at a distance, or in a state of concealment; to espy; to see. "One, in reading, skipped over all sentences where he spied a note of admiration."

To discover by close search or examination. "Look about with your eyes; spy what things are to be reformed in the church of England."

To explore; to view, inspect, and examine secretly, as a country; usually with out. "Moses sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages thereof."

Spy v. i. To search narrowly; to scrutinize. "It is my nature's plague To spy into abuses."

See images of 'Spying'

Etymology of 'Spying'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Spying" Quotes from Famous Books

... go to sleep. And no spying, as you're a gentleman. I'll talk reason to the poor fellow. I reckon it's going to be all right. We know that he's had shell shock and all the rest of it, so I dare say the law won't be ...

— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... spying and prying after me," she cried passionately. "Why can I never have a moment to myself? Other people can, and ...

— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... sir, to make sail and haul off from the shore by morning," observed his first mate. "It is well not to get nearer the Cuba coast than we can help. There are not a few low keys and sandbanks to bring us up; or one of the enemy's cruisers may be spying us, and it would give us a job to get ...

— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... chance, there comes besmeared with blood About the chaps, a lioness all foaming from the wood, From slaughter lately made of kine to staunch her bloody thirst With water of the foresaid spring. Whom Thisbe, spying first Afar by moonlight, thereupon with fearful steps gan fly And in a dark and irksome cave did hide herself thereby. And as she fled away for haste she let her mantle fall, The which for fear ...

— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... Morin found him in waiting just outside the threshold. With his finger on his lips, Pierre walked on tiptoe by his companion's side till they would have been long past sight or hearing of the conciergerie, even had the inhabitants devoted themselves to the purposes of spying ...

— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

More quotes...