etymologyslang
In many books, I've seen the word 'spook' used to mean some kind of spy. Definition 5 on dictionary.reference.com confirms this usage, but is not very helpful about the origin.
Does anyone know how this definition came about? More details (does it only refer to American spies? only spies friendly to the speaker?) would also be appreciated.
I've only ever heard the pleased meaning.
The OED says chuffed is originally military slang, and has both meanings. The "pleased, satisfied" meaning has four quotations from 1957 to 1967, whilst the "displeased, disgruntled" meaning has two, in 1960 and 1964. One is from David Storey's This Sporting Life and the other is from Celia Dale's Other people.
Norman W. Schur's British English A to Zed (2001) says:
Slang. This curious bit of antiquated army slang has two diametrically opposite meanings, depending on the context. One can say chuffed pink (tickled pink) to mean 'pleased' or dead chuffed to mean 'displeased.' In the second sense,chuffed is synonymous with choked.
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2008) says:
chuffed adjective 1 pleased, delighted; flattered; very excited. Originally northern English dialect meaning ‘proud’, adopted by military, then wider society. The current, more generalised usage was possibly spread by jazz fans. Embellishments include ‘chuffed to fuck’; ‘chuffed to arseholes’; ‘chuffed to buggery’; ‘chuffed pink’; ‘chuffed to little mint-balls’; ‘bo-chuffed’; ‘chuffed to little naffy breaks’; ‘chuffed to naffy breaks’ and ‘chuffed to oil-bumps’. Often qualified by intensifiers DEAD, REAL, WELL, etc UK, 1957. 2 displeased, disgruntled. Qualifiers and context may be required to distinguish usage from the previous sense as ‘pleased’. Variants include ‘dischuffed’ and ‘dead chuffed’ UK, 1961
The earliest attestation I can find ascribes the origin to Forel's wortsalat, as translated by Kraepelin to 'wordsalad'. This appears in The Medical Standard of 1895, recounting events from the May, 1894 meeting of the Association of German Alienists and Neurologists, where "Kraepelin of Heidelberg described a 'peculiar group of insane patients,' who, among 'other distressing symptoms,' exhibited as 'the most striking phenomenon' a tendency to the coinage of new words":
Although the earliest attestation in OED Online is from 1904, they give the origin as "after either German Wortsalat (1894 or earlier) or French salade de mots (1895 or earlier)", which jives with the date of the wortsalat attestation in The Medical Standard.
Best Answer
From the OED:
This suggests the word would be mainly used in reference to American spies, but I think the 1954 reference is Australians talking about constables, so at least occasionally it has referred to any undercover person.
Not much information on why exactly the word was chosen, but it probably was an easy jump from "ghost that haunts people" to "mysterious secret agent who spies on people".