spy
要点スパイ、探偵、ひそかに見張る
意味
- スパイ,諜報員
- 探偵(たんてい),密偵
- (敵意をもって)(…を)ひそかに見張る(探る)《+on(upon)+名》
- (…について)調査する,せんさくする《+into+名》
- …を見つけ出す,探り出す《out+名,+名+out》
例文
He works as a teacher, but actually he is a spy.
彼は教師をしているが、実はスパイだ。
She is an old hand at spying on tax evaders.
彼女は脱税を嗅ぎ出すのが得意である。
Spying on gangsters was a dangerous venture.
暴力団を見張るのは危険な冒険だった。
語源
英語の原文（Wiktionary）
From Middle English spien, aphetic variant of earlier espien (“to espy”), from Old French espier (“to spy”), from Frankish *spehōn (“to spy”), from Proto-Germanic *spehōną (“to see, look”), from Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- (“to look”). Akin to German spähen (“to spy”), Dutch spieden (“to spy”). The noun displaced native Old English sċēawere (literally “watcher”), which was also the word for "mirror." In this sense, the verb displaced Old English sċēawian, which was also the word for "to watch" and became the Modern English word show. Distant cognate vie PIE with Latin speculātor, Ancient Greek κατάσκοπος (katáskopos).