spying

Pluralspyings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The practice of secretly gathering information, especially about an enemy, rival, or competitor.

   The novel follows a quiet clerk drawn into a world of spying and betrayal.

   She was arrested on charges of spying for a foreign government.

   Similarespionage, surveillance

   Note

   A noun with a long pedigree: Middle English already had spyinge and spiyng, built from spy plus -ing. It usually names the practice and takes no plural, but it can also count separate acts of prying, often private rather than political. Amélie Rorty's Explaining Emotions (1980) lists jealousy's "endless tests and investigations and spyings." Use the plural when you mean repeated incidents rather than the trade itself.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of spy.

   The agency was caught spying on its own citizens.

   Spying through a gap in the fence, she overheard the entire plan.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of spy, and the construction tells them apart. With on or into, it means covert watching: spying on rivals. With a direct object and no preposition, it usually means simply catching sight of something, as in spying a sail on the horizon. That use sits closer to espy than to espionage. It also works as a gerund, as in Spying is a lonely trade.

   Spying a familiar face in the crowd, she waved.

   We kept spying deer along the ridge as we climbed.

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