Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A detective.
- n. See sleuthhound.
- v. To track or follow.
- v. To act as a detective.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A Middle English form of sloth.
- n. A track or trail of man or beast; scent.
- n. A newspaper name for a detective.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete An animal’s trail or track.
- n. archaic A sleuth-hound; a bloodhound.
- n. A detective.
- v. intransitive, transitive To act as a detective; to try to discover who committed a crime.
- n. obsolete, uncountable Slowness; laziness, sloth.
- n. rare A collective term for a group of bears.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Scot. The track of man or beast as followed by the scent.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a detective who follows a trail
- v. watch, observe, or inquire secretly
Etymologies
- From Old English slǣwþ, corresponding to slow + -th. (Wiktionary)
- Short for sleuthhound. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“That is another reason it’s so important to become a label sleuth.”
“To find the healthiest choices, you’ll need to be a bit of a label sleuth, reading the fine print on ingredient lists and Nutrition Facts panels.”
“My sleuth is thinner, blonder, and younger than I am, and I like it that way.”
“The word sleuth Barry Popik seems to have found the earliest known publisheduse of the term in its figurative sense.”
The Grammarphobia Blog » Blog Archive » The gold diggers of Broadway
“The latest Devilin regional amateur sleuth is not an easy read as the stranger is so abnormal with his rant, his gun, and his abrupt nap he is frightening yet so real.”
The Drifter’s Wheel-Phillip DePoy « The Merry Genre Go Round Reviews
“This fabulous series stars a kind hearted animal lover who though an amateur sleuth is strong willed; Kendra is opinionated and unforgiving especially at those who harm animals as she is an animal rights advocate.”
Double Dog Dare-Linda O. Johnston « The Merry Genre Go Round Reviews
“Ritchie's version of the British super sleuth is actually based off of an upcoming comic book that producer Lionel Wigram wrote to sell a new take on the classic character.”
Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is Robert Downey Jr. « FirstShowing.net
“In my second novel, A FAREWELL TO LEGS, Aaron Tucker, the freelance reporter and reluctant sleuth, is in Washington, DC to investigate a crime.”
“The amateur sleuth is Everyman and in our books he’s taxed beyond his experience and endurance and asked to accomplish extraordinary things.”
“And his so-called sleuth is an accountant, which is what my dad used to be.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sleuth’.
-
®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
-
Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
-
The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
-
dogs and their relatives
dog dogs and more dogs anything
I can think of ,canids and their
relatives
my favourite African wild dog
all have 42 teethaffenpinscher, akita, alan, aland, alant, alopecoid, apso, bandog, barbet, basenji, basset, bawtie and 355 more...
-
animal group
Names for Groups of Animals.
clever madeupicals and human groups are fine.
( open list, randomness )
also see:
swarm, herd, flock, group, pack, school, shoal, click, gang, army, colony, tribe and 81 more... -
Fun Words
Words that are fun to say....
gobbledygook, jings, crivens, hullabaloo, wheech, brouhaha, pizzazz, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, pussyfoot, frippery, pitter-patter and 333 more...
-
alopecia
i suppose, all of the words & phrases yoni wolf uses in alopecia, that i love.
ladies man, landmine, cavalier, consumer grade video, single's bingo, all-time gringo, calculated birth, manila envelope, mortaring, houdini, punchline, circus mirrors and 160 more...
-
Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
-
vocabulary
verisimilitude, pendulate, moxie, whimper, nary, stevedore, hubris, prodigious, super-injunction, injunction, lashings, fennel and 202 more...
-
beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
-
Actual and Spectulative Sburb Classes
A list of all known Heroic Classes available to players of the game Sburb within the Homestuck universe, as well as any other words I can think of which would theoretically adhere to the known guid...
heir, seer, knight, witch, maid, page, thief, mage, rogue, sylph, prince, bard and 116 more...
-
Words that delight me
tepid, perfunctory, trope, benign, inordinate, bewildering, ersatz, boon, delectable, apt, scuttlebutt, sequester and 398 more...
-
ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
-
xstala's Words
oneiric, inchoate, clandestine, tangerine, brusque, clout, benedictine, argonaut, juniper, tulle, zealot, vesper and 175 more...
-
stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
-
SAT PSAT ALPHABETICAL S
saccharine, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, saga, sagacity, salacious, salient, saline, salivate, salutary, salvo, sanctimonious and 156 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sleuth.
madmouth "Jane and I have been doing a bit of sleuthing" was a line from the Marple TV program...though of course they were investigating a real murder. "I'm sleuthing for my keys", say, is irksome indeed.
if you're not a filthy yod-dropper, this word represents a unique s-initial onset cluster in English, one that isn't str/l-, skr/l- or spr/l- Aug 3, 2009
yarb Someone I work with uses this as a verb, indiscriminately, to refer to any sort of investigation or research activity, covert or overt, and for some reason this irks me. Oct 22, 2008
skipvia A group of bears Nov 15, 2007