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 FRMeaning
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.
(slang)An undercover agent, spy, or intelligence analyst.
Geheimagent, Spion
шпио́нšpión
(dated, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur)A black person.
ни́ггерnígger
A metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.
(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.
- a mental representation of some haunting experience
- someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric
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.
Tom looked spooked.
Horses are easily spooked.
ruЛошадей легко вспугнуть. — Wezel
dePferde scheuen leicht. — Pfirsichbaeumchen
Translations
4 languagesBy meaning 3
By meaning 2
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.