🪑 A rocking chair 🥧 Fly cover or pie 🥧 A sweet pie 🥧 A sweet pie 🕵️ Undercover officer

shoofly

9.9

A police officer who secretly watches other officers for signs of illegal acts

noun
/ˈʃuːflaɪ/

Jargon

: policía encubierto

The department brought in a shoofly to look into the corruption scandal.

Examples

The shoofly was assigned to investigate the corruption allegations.
The presence of a shoofly made many officers uneasy during the investigation.
No one knew the new detective was really a shoofly sent to observe the squad.
A shoofly can provide valuable insights into police misconduct.
No one knew the new detective was really a shoofly sent to observe the squad.
The department brought in a shoofly to look into the corruption scandal.
The presence of a shoofly made many officers uneasy during the investigation.

Compounds

shoofly pie

9.6

A sweet open pie that uses molasses and a crumb topping

Surface Forms

shoofly singular

shooflies plural

Morphology

shoofly = shoo + fly (opaque) = shoo + fly

Although formed from 'shoo' + 'fly', the slang police sense (an undercover investigator of other officers) is non‑literal and cannot be derived from the components.

Etymology

Shoofly for an undercover police officer is thought to come from the simple words shoo and fly, where 'shoo' means 'go away'. One popular idea is that a shoofly acts like a quiet decoy who distracts or moves people so others can watch them, which is why the word now means a hidden officer placed to observe other police.