Word.ws English Dictionary

evesdrop

evesdrop is the archaic form of eavesdrop.

Meaning of eavesdrop

Verb

eavesdrop (third-person singular simple present eavesdrops, present participle eavesdropping, simple past and past participle eavesdropped)

  1. (ambitransitive) To hear (intentionally) a conversation one is not intended to hear; to listen in.
    • I hope nobody was eavesdropping on our conversation last night, since it got so personal.
  2. To listen for another organism's calls, so as to exploit them.
    • […] Eastern Red Bat will eavesdrop on the sonar calls of other red bats to locate potential insect prey.1993, David W. Nagorsen, Robert Mark Brigham, Royal British Columbia Museum, Bats of British Columbia, page 109

See all 6 meanings of eavesdrop

Forms of evesdrop

third-person singular presentevesdrops
present participleevesdropping
past participleevesdropped
pastevesdropped

Questions about evesdrop

What is evesdrop the archaic form of?
Evesdrop is the archaic form of eavesdrop.

Words near evesdrop in the dictionary

  1. everywheres
  2. everywhither
  3. everywoman
  4. everywomen
  5. eves
  6. evesdrop
  7. evesdropped
  8. evesdropper
  9. evesdroppers
  10. evesdropping
  11. evesdrops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: evesdrop (page history and authors); eavesdrop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “evesdrop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/evesdrop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.