Other forms: stakeouts
A stakeout is watching a place for a long time from hiding. On a stakeout, set up a stakeout, a police stakeout.
It is mostly boredom, which is why the films get it wrong: hours of nothing, in a car, with nowhere to go. The word is American police language that spread through television. As two words, to stake out a place is the verb.
1nounstakeoutWatching a place for a long time from hiding.
“The detectives sat in a car across the street all night on a stakeout.”
stakeout is a surveillance.
Deverbal from stake out.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Spying & Secrecy