The word tradecraft itself, although once used to describe the corpus of knowledge one must possess to practice some given trade, has now become the term mostly used to describe the tricks of the spy's trade, even making archaic the more descriptive term “spycraft”.
What you are learning right now from SpyLingo are real-world tradecraft terms used by spies belonging mainly to the Five Eyes, an alliance of intelligence agencies between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You may also find them in countries where English is a second or third language, as in India. The Cold War could be to blame for this, as it exposed the purposefully dark world of espionage to the zeitgeist through spy fiction; most notably that of John le Carré.
