Word.ws English Dictionary

spie

/spaɪ/

spie is the obsolete spelling of spy.

Meaning of spy

Verb

spy (third-person singular simple present spies, present participle spying, simple past and past participle spied)

  1. (intransitive) To act as a spy.
    • During the Cold War, Russia and America would each spy on each other for recon.
  2. (transitive) To spot; to catch sight of; to espy.
    • I think I can spy that hot guy coming over here.
  3. (intransitive) To search narrowly; to scrutinize.
    • (As I confeſſe it is my Natures plague / To ſpy into Abuſes, and of my iealouſie / Shapes faults that are not)c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  4. (transitive) To explore; to see; to view; inspect and examine secretly, as a country.

See all 6 meanings of spy

Forms of spie

third-person singular presentspies
present participlespying
past participlespied
pastspied

Phrases with spie

Questions about spie

What is spie the obsolete spelling of?
Spie is the obsolete spelling of spy.
How do you pronounce spie?
Spie is pronounced /spaɪ/.

Words near spie in the dictionary

  1. spidget finner
  2. Spidle
  3. Spidles
  4. spidroin
  5. spidroins
  6. spie
  7. spie chart
  8. spie charts
  9. spied
  10. spied on
  11. spied out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spie (page history and authors); spy (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: “spie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.