1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. spook

Find the word definition

What is "spook"

Crossword clues for spook

spook
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
spook
I.noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And these foreign spooks, these non-existents on the pay-rolls of any Western army, were part of that scheme.
▪ Anyone going to that kind of trouble, he said, has likely crossed the line from enthusiast to spook.
▪ As worrisome to the Agency as loose-lipped spooks were those few outsiders who dared to write about it.
▪ Concocting any half-truth that suited some harebrained plan dreamed up by the spooks in Century House.
▪ Hsu admits that it is somewhat ironic that technology designed to help democratise the internet is also allowing the spooks to spy.
▪ Paltry charges, it would seem, for so celebrated a spook.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Something must have spooked the horses.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Brown has taken great care not to spook the City.
▪ If the cap had been spooked by our presence could the same be true of the cats?
▪ If the stock market spooks you, park your money in two-year Treasury notes.
▪ Maybe she came in at bath time because being alone in her empty wing spooked her.
▪ Something spooked him, deep inside, somewhere inaccessible.
▪ The proposal so spooked lawmakers that they offered an alternative referendum that allowed independent voters to vote in primaries.
▪ They are spooking away at the window and Charlie and Emma take some direct action and soak them in water.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Spook

Spook \Spook\ (sp[=oo]k), n. [D. spook; akin to G. spuk, Sw. sp["o]ke, Dan. sp["o]gelse a specter, sp["o]ge to play, sport, joke, sp["o]g a play, joke.]

  1. A spirit; a ghost; an apparition; a hobgoblin. [Written also spuke.]
    --Ld. Lytton.

  2. (Zo["o]l.) The chim[ae]ra.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
spook

1801, "spectre, apparition, ghost," from Dutch spook, from Middle Dutch spooc "spook, ghost," from a common Germanic source (German Spuk "ghost, apparition," Middle Low German spok "spook," Swedish spok "scarecrow," Norwegian spjok "ghost, specter," Danish spøg "joke"), of unknown origin. According to Klein's sources, possible outside connections include Lettish spigana "dragon, witch," spiganis "will o' the wisp," Lithuanian spingu, spingeti "to shine," Old Prussian spanksti "spark."\n

\nMeaning "undercover agent" is attested from 1942. The derogatory racial sense of "black person" is attested from 1940s, perhaps from notion of dark skin being difficult to see at night. Black pilots trained at Tuskegee Institute during World War II called themselves the Spookwaffe.

spook

1867, "to walk or act like a ghost," from spook (n.). Meaning "to unnerve" is from 1935. Related: Spooked; spooking.

Wiktionary
spook

n. 1 A spirit returning to haunt a place. 2 A ghost or an apparition. 3 A hobgoblin. 4 (context espionage English) A spy. 5 A scare or fright. 6 (context dated pejorative English) A black person. vb. 1 To scare or frighten. 2 To startle or frighten an animal

Related phrases:
WordNet
spook

  1. n. someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric [syn: creep, weirdo, weirdie, weirdy]

  2. a mental representation of some haunting experience; "he looked like he had seen a ghost"; "it aroused specters from his past" [syn: ghost, shade, wraith, specter, spectre]

  3. v. frighten or scare, and often provoke into a violent action; "The noise spooked the horse"

Wikipedia
Spook

Spook is a synonym of ghost or apparition, derived from the Dutch word spook.

Spook or spooks may also refer to:

Spook (comics)

The Spook is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. He first appeared in Detective Comics #434 published in 1973.

Spook (film)

Spook is a 1988 Australian film about a family who goes on a getaway and is attacked by something dangerous in the forest.

Spook (nickname)

Spook is a nickname of:

  • Thomas Dowler (1903-1986), American football, basketball and baseball player and football and basketball coach
  • Rupert Hanley (born 1952), South African cricketer
  • Spook Jacobs (1925–2011), American Major League Baseball player
  • Billy J. Murphy (1921-2008), head football coach at the University of Memphis from 1958 to 1971
Spook (crater)

Spook crater is a small crater in the Descartes Highlands of the moon visited by the astronauts of Apollo 16. The name of the crater was formally adopted by the IAU in 1973. Geology Station 2 is adjacent to Spook, between it and the smaller, younger crater called Buster to the north of it.

On April 21, 1972, the Apollo 16 lunar module (LM) Orion landed about 500 m east of Spook, which is between the prominent North Ray and South Ray craters. The astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the area over the course of three EVAs using a Lunar Roving Vehicle, or rover. They stopped at Spook during EVA 1, on the way back to the LM from Flag crater.

Spook crater is approximately 340 m in diameter and over 20 m deep. Spook is about 550 m west of the landing site itself.

The Lunar Portable Magnetometer (LPM) was used to obtain a reading of approximately 180 γ (gamma) at Spook. This was one of four locations at the landing site where the LPM was used.

Spook cuts into the Cayley Formation of Imbrian age.

Usage examples of "spook".

Als een bliksemschicht flitste deze gedachte door haar brein, slechts gedurende een ondeelbaar oogenblik, en zij schrikte er voor als voor een spook.

Now the nations that those spook institutions served no longer exist, their very land masses being part of the orbiting noospheric construction project that will ultimately turn the entire solar system into a gigantic Matrioshka brain.

Spook took a sudden series of zigzags down the road, not all-out, now, but scarily fast for so many turns.

There was nothing behind him but normal traffic, and yet Schey was spooked.

The riders, spooked and uncertain, leave her for the slinking carrion-eaters.

Rain was the culprit that had initially spooked Shimmer and Slip by picking up a far sending like that.

Which brought his head around and his chin into collision with its spooked head-toss as it backed off.

It kept Jennie spooked, though Jennie was doing amazingly well at holding herself calm and not talking.

Before we had a chance to find out, I spooked on ahead and checked the room where I had last found myself.

Cloud, venturing close to him again, spooked off with an angry whuff of breath, the wildness Cloud had before storms, deserting him as the other nighthorses, gathering here and there among the riders, shifted and snorted in the gathering dark.

A group of them spooked off the same way Cloud had, a muted thunder down the street toward the farther reaches of the camp.

They were here to talk about the rogue that had spooked a convoy off the road on Rogers Peak, and here were Harper and his friends talking as if Stuart was the real threat, right here in Shamesey.

Or it was the spooked riders, the ones that had come in with the news.

It might be a spooked, unwise decision, with the sleet having turned to honest snow by the time they passed the shelter on the trail.

Cloud spooked another couple of feet and stopped, shedding snow with a whip of his tail.