A stakeout is a long, secret watch on a place — usually by police, sitting in a car or an empty room across the street, waiting hour after hour for a suspect to show up or a crime to happen. The two ideas inside the word are hiding and waiting: nobody is meant to know you are there, and nothing much happens for a very long time, which is why films always show the coffee and the boredom. It is a countable noun ('a three-day stakeout'), and it comes from the two-word verb 'stake out' — police stake out a house, and the operation itself is the stakeout. Reporters use it too, for camping outside a celebrity's or politician's door waiting for a comment. In loose, joking everyday use, people stretch it much further: waiting outside a shop for a limited-edition sale, or watching the office pantry to catch whoever keeps taking your lunch. The word belongs to news reports, crime dramas, and casual speech rather than formal writing — an official document would say 'surveillance operation'.

埋伏監視、跟監（警方在定點長時間祕密盯梢；記者守候採訪也可用）