spook

Plural: spooks

Noun

• someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric
• a mental representation of some haunting experience
• A ghost or phantom.
• A hobgoblin.
• A scare or fright.
• An undercover agent, spy, or intelligence analyst.
• A black person.
• A metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct.
• A psychiatrist.
• A player who engages in hole carding by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present.

Verb

Verb Forms: spooked, spooking, spooks

• To scare or frighten someone or something.
• frighten or scare, and often provoke into a violent action
  • "The noise spooked the horse"
• To frighten or make nervous (especially by startling).
• To become frightened (by something startling).
• To haunt.

Examples

• A sudden power outage threatened to spook him during his winning Words With Friends turn.
• The big spider gave me a spook.
• The building was haunted by a couple of spooks.
• The deer spooked at the sound of the dogs.
• The hunters were spooked when the black cat crossed their path. The movement in the bushes spooked the deer and they ran.

Synonyms

creep, ghost, shade, specter, spectre, weirdie, weirdo, weirdy, wraith, apparition, barghest, duppy, eidolon, empuse, haint, haunt, jumbie, phantom, poltergeist, revenant, spirit, spook, sprite, visitant

Anagrams of spook