Refers to where Bertie Wooster's "suave 'n' savvy" butler secretly listens in on others' conversations in order to keep his dim-witted employer out of trouble.
P.G. Wodehouse's famous fictionalmanservant did a bit of Jeevesdropping on more than one occasion in order to save his naive young London aristocrat's hide.
Most complaining-prone individuals are more thanwilling to openly voice their chief gripes to anyone who will listen, so there should seldom be any need to resort to peevesdropping in order to become privy to said subject matter!
When a Search Engine secretly records your activity or an "Assistant Surface" (Google Home/Alexa) or "AI Virtual Assistant" (Cortana/Siri) listens to your background conversations in order to tailor search results and display ads.
In reference to Ask Jeeves, a search platform, launched in 1997 that allowed users to enter a natural-language query into the search box, and the virtual "valet" would come back with the answer.
I've been frequenting a few websites with seafood recipes and watching some maritime cooking shows and I swear, something must be Jeevesdropping on me because now all my online feeds and ads are about how to meet Nordic women!
Couple at bar having private conversation: “ugh what was the name of that guy in that movie? The movie about spys? Ya know with the one that went crazy?”
You, 3 seats away, by yourself, interjecting: “it’s Tom Cruise. Sorry, I was jeevesdropping.”