whodunit
noun
Did you know?
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
The Atlantic, 14 May 2026
The play is more of a thriller than a whodunit.
—Amy Reyes
may 14, Miami Herald, 14 May 2026
Five murders later, even the butler (Tim Curry) is unsure whodunit.
—Kirk Ellis, HollywoodReporter, 12 May 2026
Directed by Kyle Balda, The Sheep Detectives stars Jackman as George, a shepherd who reads whodunit novels to his sheep at night, not realizing that his woolly companions actually understand the murder mysteries.
—Tim Lammers, Forbes.com, 9 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for whodunit
Cite this Entry
“Whodunit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whodunit. Accessed 17 May. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
whodunit
noun
