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Espionage is the work of spies: secretly finding out information that is not yours, and giving it to someone who wants it — a country, or sometimes a rival company. When companies do it, people say industrial espionage. It is a formal noun with a French feel. You commit espionage or work in espionage; you do not say “I espionage.” The person is a spy; espionage is the activity. English took the word from French espionnage, “spying,” and at the root it meets English spy. In news and law it is a serious crime; in films it is adventure.
間諜活動；諜報
組成From French espionnage, from espionner (“to spy”), from espion (“spy”). The older Germanic root is the same one behind English spy. In French the s had gone silent; later the sound was brought back, and English followed that modern form.
同家族的字
- spysame old root meaning “to watch in secret”; spy is the common English cousin
原始詞典資料1 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。
espionagenoun/ˈɛs.pi.əˌnɑːʒ/
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The act or process of learning secret information through clandestine means.
- So intolerable did Heavy Benson's espionage become, that Raynham would have grown depopulated of its womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the Baronet what a fearful arm his butler was wielding.
- The results of this investigation to date indicate that there is probable cause to believe that, beginning in 1985 and continuing to the present, ROBERT PHILIP HANSSEN (hereinafter “HANSSEN”), a United States citizen, has conspired […] to commit espionage against the United States on behalf of a foreign government, specifically the Soviet Union or Russia, and has in fact engaged in such espionage.
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。