eavesdrop (v.)
To eavesdrop is to listen to something you are not part of. The word was a place before it was an act.1
The eavesdrop, or eavesdrip, was the strip of ground around a building where the rain came off the eaves. Old English had it as yfesdrype, and it mattered in law: you could not build too near your neighbour’s boundary, because your roof would drain onto their land.12
Anyone standing in that strip is standing against the wall, under the eaves, close enough to hear what is said inside. By the fifteenth century that person had a name. The verb came later, out of the name.12
He was eavesdropping on the next table.