Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Informal A ghost; a specter.
  • noun Slang A secret agent; a spy.
  • noun Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a black person.
  • intransitive verb To haunt.
  • intransitive verb To startle and cause nervous activity in; frighten.
  • intransitive verb To become frightened and nervous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A ghost; a hobgoblin.
  • To play the spook.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A spirit; a ghost; an apparition; a hobgoblin.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The chimæra.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A spirit returning to haunt a place.
  • noun A ghost or an apparition.
  • noun A hobgoblin.
  • noun espionage A spy.
  • noun A scare or fright.
  • noun dated, pejorative A black person.
  • verb To scare or frighten.
  • verb To startle or frighten an animal

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb frighten or scare, and often provoke into a violent action
  • noun someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric
  • noun a mental representation of some haunting experience

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Dutch, from Middle Dutch spooc.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Dutch spook ("ghost"), from Middle Dutch spooc ("spook, ghost"); liken German Spuk ("ghost, apparition"), Middle Low German spok ("spook"), Swedish spok (" scarecrow"), Norwegian spjok ("ghost, specter"), Danish spøg ("joke"). Extra-Germanic cognates include Albanian shpik ("to invent, make up, fantasize") and fik ("to extinguish, fade").

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Examples

  • I love the teeny torpedo for my home river fishing smallies, and the spook is a close second for Smallmouth also.

    The Mighty Jitterbug 2009

  • I love the teeny torpedo for my home river fishing smallies, and the spook is a close second for Smallmouth also.

    The Mighty Jitterbug 2009

  • What if you pee of your stand and a monster buck walks by and happens to spook from the smell.

    To Pee or Not To Pee Off Your Treestand? 2009

  • The super spook is my favorite top water muskie bait for the spring.

    The Mighty Jitterbug 2009

  • The super spook is my favorite top water muskie bait for the spring.

    The Mighty Jitterbug 2009

  • What if you pee of your stand and a monster buck walks by and happens to spook from the smell.

    To Pee or Not To Pee Off Your Treestand? 2009

  • When the somewhat incompetent spook is told the real story they have tot ry and work together without getting blown up.

    Archive 2007-07-01 Blue Tyson 2007

  • When the somewhat incompetent spook is told the real story they have tot ry and work together without getting blown up.

    Archive 2007-08-01 Blue Tyson 2007

  • "Fish in less than 10 feet tend to spook from the straight-overhead hull commotion, and fish much deeper than 25 feet get difficult to read -- especially if it's windy."

    Crappie Commando 2002

  • Hence on our troop sweaters we had a picture of a ghost with a SA80 in the stile of Ghost Busters, with the name spook troop.

    Army Rumour Service 2009

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