Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
counterspy

counterspy

1 7.3
A person who finds and stops enemy spies
  • noun
  • /ˈkaʊntərˌspaɪ/
: contraespía
  • However, a news organization is not expected to resort to spy-counterspy tactics or representation by counsel.
  • spy and counterspy

Examples

  • His job as a counterspy involved detecting foreign agents trying to infiltrate the government.

  • My sister and I played spy and counterspy, one or the other being captured by the Russians.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Jealousy between those who lost livestock and those hiding them arose, feeding the cycle of spy and counterspy.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Repeatedly identifying himself and Evans as "spy" and "counterspy," Agee is troubled by his intrusion into private spaces, whether the church building or the homes of the tenant farmers (xvi).

    Academic text (2017)

  • Palguta worked as a counterspy in New York for 27 years.

  • Every strategy deployed by the enemy was meticulously countered by the skilled counterspy.

Synonyms

spy
vscounterspy
596 2.9

A person who secretly collects information for a government or company

detects and stops enemy intelligence agents rather than gathering general information

Surface Forms

counterspy singular
counterspies plural

Morphology

counterspy = spy (transparent) = counter + spy

The prefix 'counter-' clearly indicates opposition, and the meaning of 'counterspy' is directly derived from 'spy'.

Etymology

The word counterspy is made of counter meaning 'against' and spy meaning 'to watch secretly'. So a counterspy is a spy who works 'against' enemy spies to find and stop them.