as in eavesdropping (on)
to listen to (another in private conversation)
it's not polite to listen in on other people's private conversations
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for listening in (on)
Verb
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Mounted officers and sniffer dogs patrolled the streets near Windsor and Eton Central railway station, monitoring arrivals and maintaining security around the historic town.—
Amanda Castro
Hannah Parry
Shane Croucher
Jack Royston,
MSNBC Newsweek,
18 Sep. 2025 -
Shaun Maguire, Sequoia partner Lahav and cofounder Omer Nevo, who was monitoring and predicting wildfires at Google before starting Irregular, launched the company in mid-2023, just as AI tools like ChatGPT were hitting the mainstream.—
Thomas Brewster,
Forbes.com,
17 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Adopting that Ontario town seemed like a believable cover story and worked most of the time — except when a fellow American called her out after hearing her accent.—
Vivian Song,
CNN Money,
18 Sep. 2025
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Jacobs said supervisors were left in the dark, only hearing that their employees’ accommodations had been terminated from the employees themselves.—
Mary Walrath-Holdridge,
USA Today,
18 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Iran has executed a man accused of spying for Israel, Iranian state media reported, after the rights group Amnesty International said the man, Babak Shahbazi, had been sentenced to death in an unfair trial marred by allegations of torture.—
Robert Birsel,
MSNBC Newsweek,
17 Sep. 2025
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In a December 2023 Slate editorial, security researcher Bruce Schneier warned that AI models could enable unprecedented mass spying by automating the analysis and summarization of vast conversation datasets.—
Benj Edwards,
ArsTechnica,
17 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Listening in (on).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/listening%20in%20%28on%29. Accessed 21 Sep. 2025.
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