Meaning

noun someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric

noun a mental representation of some haunting experience

verb frighten or scare, and often provoke into a violent action

originBorrowed from Dutch spook (“ghost”), from Middle Dutch spooc (“spook, ghost”). Cognate with Middle Low German spôk, spûk (“apparition, ghost”), Middle High German gespük (“a haunting”), German Spuk, Danish spøge (“to haunt”), Swedish spöke (“ghost”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0