Word of the Day

: May 3, 2025

sleuth

verb SLOOTH

What It Means

To sleuth is to carefully or methodically search for information, or to act as a detective.

// We spent hours at the flea market sleuthing for 19th century paintings.

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sleuth in Context

"To fill the market with vintage treasure, we called upon some of the industry’s best dressed—Anok Yai, Emma Chamberlain, Hamish Bowles, Julia Sarr-Jamois, Kaia Gerber, Paloma Elsesser, Tabitha Simmons, Tonne Goodman, and Gigi Hadid—to sleuth through eBay and curate their must-haves." — Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 6 March 2025

Did You Know?

"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 the Old Norse word slōth, the term referred to the track of an animal or person. In Scotland, sleuth hund referred to a kind of bloodhound used to hunt game or track down fugitives from justice. In 19th-century U.S. English, sleuthhound, soon shortened to sleuth, began to be used for a detective. From there, sleuth slipped into verb use to apply to what a sleuth does.