Talk:spook

spook - zbuk. Some semantic examples where zbuk mean kapuś, donosiciel, konfident words semantically equivalent to word spook . For review some current and historic examples with some references. Somehow the website do not save more examples due to automatic filter. So someone working on etymology will need to do some more work.

It doesn't really matter, because spook doesn't have any connotation of betrayal, so those are all irrelevant. When referring to a spy spook is actually a neutral or somewhat positive way to describe someone involved in espionage- someone who's spying on other countries, not on their neighbors. I would also caution against reading too much into superficial resemblance: it's not that uncommon for random chance to produce fairly striking similarities between unrelated terms in different languages. Even if there were a relationship, the more likely explanation would be borrowing from some Germanic language into Polish, not the other way around. To convince anyone of a Polish origin for this term, you'd need to cite a reliable entomological source such as a dictionary or a journal article written by someone with a background in historical linguistics. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:31, 3 November 2015 (UTC)