spook
A ghost or phantomA ghost or phantom.
Recorded: Commander Keane, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
» I didn't mean to spook you.
CK · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRTranslations
4 languagesBy meaning 3
By meaning 2
Examples
61 sentencesI didn't mean to spook you.
Tom's horse got spooked and bolted before he could mount it.
Something must've spooked Tom.
Meaning
7 senses(informal)A ghost or phantom.
The building was haunted by a couple of spooks.
Geist, Phantom, Gespenst
при́зракprízrak
(informal)A scare or fright.
The big spider gave me a spook.
A metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.
More meanings 4
(slang)An undercover agent, spy, or intelligence analyst.
Geheimagent, Spion
шпио́нšpión
(dated, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur)A black person.
ни́ггерnígger
(US, slang)A psychiatrist.
(slang)A player who engages in hole carding by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present.
- someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric
- a mental representation of some haunting experience
Origin
Borrowed from Dutch spook (“ghost”), from Middle Dutch spooc (“spook, ghost”). Cognate witBorrowed from Dutch spook (“ghost”), from Middle Dutch spooc (“spook, ghost”). Cognate with Middle Low German spôk, spûk (“apparition, ghost”), Middle High German gespük (“a haunting”), German Spuk, Danish spøge (“to haunt”), Swedish spöke (“ghost”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.