Secret Spy Vocabulary! Learn English Words for Spying & Deception | Advanced English vocabulary

- Welcome back to 'Spying with Becky'.

I am in the dark about my boyfriend,

Kyle's feelings for me.

Is he cheating on me?

Does he really love me?

That kind of thing.

So I need to go undercover to find out

what happens behind closed doors

when I'm not there.

I have a genius disguise.

I'm going to pretend to just be one of the guys

and eavesdrop on their conversations,

but like,

how do you even make friends with guys?

Like how do you infiltrate a group and just hang out?

This might take some time.

(door clicks)

Hey guys.

I'm Barry.

- Barry.

Do you like fortnight?

Come play with us.

- Okay. Yeah.

- Grab a drink.

- Yeah, that was too easy.

I have to try really hard not to blow my cover here.

They have to believe that I'm just one of the guys.

So, having a penis, that's weird huh?

- Tell me about it.

This morning I had to pee so bad.

- Ew.

I mean that's tough, man.

- Ha, yeah.

- What do you do, Barry?

- Damn it.

I didn't make a backstory.

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

What do I do?

I, ummm,

I fix cars.

That was so stupid.

I don't know anything about cars.

What if they ask a follow up question?

- Nice. - Cool.

- Phew. That was close.

- Oh yeah, how's everything with Becky?

- Yeah good.

- Becky is batshit.

- Whoa!

- What?

- Oh really?

Because I think she's sexy as hell.

- Dude!

- No, I mean like I would have sex with her.

- Oh what's this?

- Did I just blow it?

Did I just blow my cover?

- You know Barry, I feel like I've seen you before.

- This could be it.

The end, I'm done.

(soft instrumental music)

Okay, before we find out what happened to Becky in that vlog

we need to do some vocabulary about spying.

First, why was she spying?

Her boyfriend is Kyle

and she thinks that Kyle is cheating on her.

What does cheating mean?

For example, they are a couple,

but he kisses someone else.

This is cheating.

How can we use this in a sentence?

He cheated on her,

his girlfriend,

with her,

the other girl;

so make sure you get your prepositions right.

You cheat on the girlfriend or boyfriend

with the other person.

That's what Becky's worried about,

so what does she do?

She goes undercover.

If you're a spy,

your cover is your fake identity,

it's your disguise.

And in movies and TV shows with spies,

when they start to hide their real identity,

they go undercover.

That's the collocation.

You go undercover.

But let's say that you go undercover

and,

maybe you were wearing fake hair,

a wig,

and the wig comes off.

People now know that that was a fake identity.

You blow your cover,

you lose your fake identity.

We could say this in a few ways like:

my cover is blown,

The passive voice, my cover is blown.

So you notice this is an irregular verb.

He blew his cover.

So blow,

blew,

blown.

Think of the word, blow, like lose.

This also works in casinos.

You go in a casino,

you gamble and you lose all of your money.

You could say,

"Oh my God I blew all my money in like 10 minutes".

So think of it more like lose carelessly.

But also also it's like spend carelessly.

Let's practice that right now.

Question for you:

When was the last time you blew your money

on something stupid?

For example, for me,

once I blew like 80 pounds on a shirt.

It looked great in the shop,

but then I took it home, wore it,

and I was like, this looks stupid.

Never wore it.

Yeah. I could have returned the shirt to the shop,

but I'm stupid,

so I blew my money.

Make me feel better by telling me in the comments,

when was the last time you blew your money

on something stupid.

When you do something or say something in private,

not for other people to hear,

not for other people to see,

we have an expression and that's "behind closed doors".

You often see this expression in movies and TV

and in real life people often use this expression

to explain that they aren't interested

in other people's private lives.

So a common thing you might hear is

- I don't give too much of a shit

what people do behind closed doors

with consenting adults.

- And again, it just means your private life is private.

But not for Becky.

She wants to find out what happens behind closed doors.

How is she going to do that?

She's going to listen to their conversation.

We have a word for this as well:

to eavesdrop.

To listen to something private that you are not involved in.

- Don't eavesdrop on my private conversations.

- There's a more casual phrasal verb we could use

which is 'to listen in'.

Let's use a full sentence so we know how to use this.

He is eavesdropping,

or he is listening in.

Whoever the people behind the door are,

he's eavesdropping on them;

He's listening in on them.

The preposition is on.

Also. Have you ever tried this?

You have a glass against a wall or a door

to try and eavesdrop what's happening next door.

Yeah, it doesn't work.

I tried.

I mean, I've never tried it.

I would never try it.

Okay. This next word kind of slang,

but now yeah, it's slang.

Remember when you were in school, in class,

and there was this one bad kid in class

that always did naughty things, bad things.

For example,

(blows loudly)

spit balls at the teacher, things like that.

And when that happened,

what was your reaction?

Did you stay quiet or

were you the one who went,

"He did it! It was him!"

When you tell the teacher who did something bad

and what they did,

we have a word for that.

Well we have a few words, actually.

So as a phrasal verb, you could say

"To tell on someone".

Full sentence: He, past,

told on him.

He told on him, and we have a noun for this guy.

Do you have this in your language?

In English we say he is a snitch.

Now a snitch.

Yes, it's that thing from Harry Potter.

But in slang terms,

a snitch is this person who tells on the bad person;

what they did, how they did it, that kind of thing.

A snitch can be a noun,

or a verb.

So it's like a slang version of this:

To snitch on,

again on, him.

He snitched on him.

That's a regular verb to snitch on someone.

Also, we have an interesting expression.

You know what happens to snitches?

- Snitches get stitches.

- Snitches get stitches.

- Snitches get stitches.

I think this expression came from prison,

but now people use this expression to say,

"If you tell on me something bad is gonna happen to you"

because a stitch is when you get a cut,

and the doctor

(man whistles)

sews up that cut,

those are called stitches.

So snitches get stitches.

If you tell on me something bad will happen to you.

Do you have an expression like this in your country?

And is it,

I imagine it's more terrifying than in English.

In English, it kind of sounds funny.

Not cute, just funny.

You might also hear the verb to narc on someone

or again as a noun,

a narc, that is short for narcotics agent.

So like a detective,

someone in the police who searches for drugs

and in this context it means the same thing.

So tell me in the comments,

have you ever snitched on someone?

What was it for?

What happened?

Did you get stitches?

Now, maybe this is all a bit crazy.

I mean, you're not a spy.

I'm not a spy,

but when you want to say that someone is crazy,

we have a fun, definitely more vulgar word for that.

(soft playful music)

If you meet someone who's like,

"yeah the moon landing wasn't real",

you might think this person is crazy.

But,

maybe there is someone more crazy.

The moon, that doesn't exist.

When the word crazy isn't enough,

you could say, "These guys are batshit crazy"

but actually you don't need that word

because it's, they both mean the same thing.

Usually we just say, "Mate, you are batshit".

Tell me in the comments,

which spy things have you ever done?

I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson.

All of the vocabulary is available in my ebook.

It's on Patreon.

You'll find the link in the description.

There's an amazing PDF worksheet for this

and many of my favorite lessons that I've done,

and let's find out what happened to Becky in that vlog.

- You know, Barry, I feel like I've seen you before.

You're not secretly sent here by Becky?

You're not one of her friends, are you?

You a double agent?

You gonna snitch on us?

You know, snitches get stitches right?

- No, no.

I would never, I wouldn't want to lose my penis,

am I right?

- Nice. - Nice.

- How did that work?

Do guys really talk like that?

Or do guys just talk so much shit that nothing makes sense.

Follow my updates on Instagram

and next time I'll show you what happens

when guys think farts are funny.

Until next time, don't tell Kyle I'm spying on him.

See you next time.

(soft playful music)