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
Brian Truitt, USA Today, 12 Dec. 2025
This one is sure to be a treat for cinephiles, fans of whodunits and general audiences as filmmaker Rian Johnson amps up the intrigue, clever dialogue and shoehorns in a who’s who of Hollywood into the cast.
—Abid Rahman, HollywoodReporter, 1 Dec. 2025
In The Real Inspector Hound, two critics, Moon and Birdboot, sit in an audience bank across from the real (for want of a better word) audience and watch a whodunit.
—Sara Holdren, Vulture, 1 Dec. 2025
The holiday season may be synonymous with festive romances, thanks in no small part to Hallmark, but there's something about a cold winter evening that lends itself just as nicely to settling in with a good old-fashioned whodunit.
—Sabienna Bowman, PEOPLE, 29 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for whodunit
Cite this Entry
“Whodunit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whodunit. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.
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whodunit
noun
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