whodunit
noun
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In 1930, Donald Gordon, a book reviewer for News of Books, needed to come up with something to say about a rather unremarkable mystery novel called Half-Mast Murder. "A satisfactory whodunit," he wrote. The relatively new term (introduced only a year earlier) played fast and loose with spelling and grammar, but whodunit caught on anyway. Other writers tried respelling it who-done-it, and one even insisted on using whodidit, but those sanitized versions lacked the punch of the original and fell by the wayside. Whodunit became so popular that by 1939 at least one language pundit had declared it "already heavily overworked" and predicted it would "soon be dumped into the taboo bin." History has proven that prophecy false, and whodunit is still going strong.
Examples of whodunit in a Sentence
Carly Tagen-Dye, Peoplemag, 26 May 2024
The series goes beyond the traditional whodunit nature of crime mysteries to explore the motivation beyond the acts, with Pullman’s weary detective serving as a strong anchor through the show’s many twists and turns.
—Kevin Jacobsen and Sarah Perchikoff, EW.com, 21 May 2024
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'whodunit.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Whodunit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whodunit. Accessed 29 May. 2024.
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whodunit
noun
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