listen in on something/someone

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Using the ears
attend
aurally
be all earsidiom
binaural
binaurally
catch
cloth ears
ear
earshot
eavesdrop
eavesdropper
hark
hearing
hearken
lend an earidiom
listenable
monaural
monaurally
non-auditory
prick

overhear | American Dictionary

overhear
verb[ I/T ]
us/ˌoʊ·vərˈhɪər/past tense and past participleoverheardus/ˌoʊ·vərˈhɜrd/
to hear what other people are saying unintentionally and without their knowledge:
[ T ]I overheard a funny conversation on the bus this morning.
[ I ]They were so loud, I couldn’t help overhearing.

Examples of overhear

overhear
Several pharmacy users commented on the knowledge and training of the pharmacists, although most also remarked about the difficulties of being overheard in the queue.
What matters in architects' writings - as in their design work - are those moments when we sense that we are overhearing a conversation.
Actual readers become like eavesdroppers who overhear a conversation that is not really meant for their hopelessly-biased ears.
The plot was overheard by the daughter, who, looking forward to the marriage, became sad and alarmed.
Are there sometimes difficulties because you overhear something?
Results show that learners who did not overhear initial learner utterances were significantly less successful at distinguishing recasts from repetitions.
Each interview was conducted privately between the par ticipant and a researcher, with no one else present or able to overhear the conversation.
The bilinguals had silently overheard and understood the derogatory jokes by the medical staff.
Respondents were interviewed individually and care was taken to ensure that fellow villagers could not overhear the interview.
Is it useful for the conversation to be overheard on the link?
To minimize the possibility of being overheard, participants had the option of entering their response on the computer keyboard rather than making a verbal response.
It was overheard by the ostler who confided it to other customers.
Their talk is, however, available to be overheard by other pupils, although initially no other pupil is a ratified listener.
As readers, we are at once drawn into the role of eavesdroppers overhearing two persons engaged in what seems like an intimate conversation.
She argues that mastering first and second person pronouns is facilitated by overhearing, and understanding, third parties using these pronouns.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.