spy

1. 1.

   (military) a secret agent hired by a state to obtain information about its enemies or by a business to obtain industrial secrets from competitors

   Synonymsundercover agent

   Broadersecret agent

   Narrowercounterspydouble agentespionage agentforeign agentinfiltratorsleeperMata Hari

   military

2. 2.

   a secret watcher; someone who secretly watches other people

   “my spies tell me that you had a good time last night”

   Broaderspectator

   Narrowersnooptail

Other forms of spy

plural

spies·

past tense or participle

spied

present participle

spying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about spy

What does spy mean?

spy means "catch sight of". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in spy?

spy has 1 syllable: spy. In IPA it is /ˈspaɪ/.

What is another word for spy?

Close synonyms include descry, spot, espy, stag, snoop. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is spy a common word?

spy is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.