- 1
An eavesdropper is a person who listens, on purpose, to other people’s talk without joining in and without being meant to hear. They stay quiet and try not to be noticed. People use this word when the listening feels sneaky or wrong — though actually, just catching a few words by accident in a noisy café is not ; that is . You can be an eavesdropper at a door, under a window, on a phone line, or behind a thin wall. The verb is ; the eavesdropper is the one who does it. It is an ordinary word, a little old-fashioned in flavour, and it almost always criticises the listener, not the people talking.
偷聽的人；竊聽者
組成eavesdrop (to listen in secret) + -er (the person who does it). Eavesdrop itself comes from standing under the eaves — the overhanging edge of a roof — to hear people inside.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，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。
eavesdroppernoun/ˈiːvzˌdɹɒpə(ɹ)/
- 1
One who eavesdrops.
- 2
slanggovernmentmilitarypoliticsA surveillance aircraft.
- […] the Japanese Ministry of Defence rang the bell and informed the world's press about the Tokyo Express — the ironic Japanese nickname for the constant flow of Soviet flying eavesdroppers in Japanese airspace.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。