- 1偷聽
To eavesdrop is to listen on purpose to other people’s talk when they do not know you are listening — standing close, staying quiet, catching a conversation that was not for you. You eavesdrop on someone, or on a conversation. It is a word: we use it when the listening is sneaky. It comes from eaves + drop. Long ago the eavesdrop (or eavesdrip) was the strip of ground where water dropped from the eaves; a person standing there, tight against the house, could hear voices inside. The listening sense grew from that picture. Though actually, today almost nobody thinks of the roof when they say it; they only mean the secret listening. There is a noun too, but the verb is the one meet.
組成eaves（屋簷）+ drop（水從簷邊滴下來）。偷聽的意思來自人站在屋簷滴水的那一帶偷聽屋裡的話。
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
eavesdropverb/ˈiːvzˌdɹɒp/
- 1
To hear (intentionally) a conversation one is not intended to hear; to listen in.
- You shouldn't eavesdrop, David. I told you: You'll only hear things you'll wish you hadn't.
- I hope nobody was eavesdropping on our conversation last night, since it got so personal.
- 2
biologynatural-scienceszoologyTo 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.
- Frog-biting midges also depend on eavesdropping for reproduction, and one would predict similarly strong selection to evolve auditory adaptations for hearing and localizing calls of their hosts.
eavesdropnoun/ˈiːvzˌdɹɒp/
- 1
The dripping of rain from the eaves of a house.
- 2
The space around a house on which such water drips.
- 3
A concealed aperture through which an occupant of a building can surreptitiously listen to people talking at an entrance to the building.
- 4
The act of intentionally hearing a conversation not intended to be heard.
- Were you having a little eavesdrop on us last night?
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。