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"They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" Those canine tracks in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles set the great Sherlock Holmes sleuthing on the trail of a murderer. It was a case of art imitating etymology. When Middle English speakers first borrowed sleuth from Old Norse, the term referred to "the track of an animal or person." In Scotland, sleuthhound referred to a bloodhound used to hunt game or track down fugitives from justice. In 19th-century U.S. English, sleuthhound became an epithet for a detective and was soon shortened to sleuth. From there, it was only a short leap to turning sleuth into a verb describing what a sleuth does.
Synonyms
Examples of sleuth in a Sentence
Vulture, 20 Sep. 2023
He’s been played by everybody from Tony Randall to John Malkovich; Peter Ustinov portrayed the deductive sleuth six times, and David Suchet has made a career out of gifting TV viewers with the definitive take on Christie’s murder-mystery icon.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 16 Sep. 2023
Christie may not have invented the non-professional detective, but Miss Marple remains a template for the amateur sleuth.
—Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2023
Some curious sleuths have managed to find the old profile, now an online time capsule of Collins’ social media presence all through her childhood and teenage years.
—Angela Yang, NBC News, 3 Sep. 2023
Internet sleuths on TikTok and YouTube quickly descended upon Franke's and Hildebrandt's social media pages following their arrests to uncover alarming statements made by the two influencers on their public platforms.
—Audrey Conklin, Fox News, 8 Sep. 2023
The Minions and Black Widow received solo movies, and now Stephen King’s unassuming ace sleuth Holly Gibney has the literary equivalent of a blockbuster.
—Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 6 Sep. 2023
Over the past year, their little group of internet sleuths, trans engineers and activists has methodically chased Kiwi Farms across servers and networks around the globe, successively persuading more than two dozen companies to drop the site.
—Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post, 3 Sep. 2023
The mystery series follows a Gen Z amateur sleuth and tech-savvy hacker named Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) who is invited, alongside eight other guests, by a reclusive billionaire (Clive Owen) to participate in a retreat at a remote and dazzling location.
—Selome Hailu, Variety, 17 Aug. 2023
Jonathan Lethem, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2023
One redditor sleuthed that The Afterparty season three is already in the works, according to an Instagram story posted by writer Katie Miller.
—Town & Country, 2 Aug. 2023
Two button clicks later, the usage type was corrected; part — but not all — of that was a dishwasher cycle, while the rest remains to be sleuthed out.
—Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2023
Over a five-year research period, the pair, along with curatorial assistant in Latino art and history Carolina Maestre, selected and sleuthed out 94 objects for the show after making visits to 74 collections around the world.
—Maya Wei-Haas, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 May 2023
Serious collectors sleuth online for hard-to-find species and travel around the country to auctions and plant shows.
—Hannah Holland, Washington Post, 2 May 2023
Veterinarians first identified influenza D in pigs in 2011 and later sleuthed out the virus’s primary host: cattle.
—Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 24 Apr. 2023
On Twitter, armchair sleuths with hundreds of thousands of followers use tracking software to expose crypto scams.
—David Yaffe-Bellany, New York Times, 22 Apr. 2023
And yet, that didn't stop them from immediately sleuthing through her lyrics to find connections to Joe.
—Women's Health, 10 Apr. 2023
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sleuth.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Noun
short for sleuthhound
Noun
1872, in the meaning defined above
Verb
1900, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense
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Cite this Entry
“Sleuth.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sleuth. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.
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Kids Definition
sleuth
1 of 2 nounsleuth
2 of 2 verbNoun
a shortened form of sleuthhound "a dog that follows a track or trail by scent," from Middle English sleuth "a track or trail"; of Norse origin
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