The AI-powered English dictionary
plural sleuths
A detective. quotations examples
Do ye want me to become a sleuth, or engage detectives to track the objects of your erroneous philanthropy?
1908, Edith Van Dyne (Frank L. Baum), Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Millville
“This is a great piece of sleuth work for sure, and it significantly advances efforts to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study.
2021 June 23, Carl Zimmer, quoting Michael Worobey, “Scientist Finds Early Virus Sequences That Had Been Mysteriously Deleted”, in The New York Times
(archaic) A sleuthhound; a bloodhound.
(obsolete) An animal’s trail or track.
third-person singular simple present sleuths, present participle sleuthing, simple past and past participle sleuthed
(intransitive, transitive) To act as a detective; to try to discover who committed a crime, or, more generally, to solve a mystery. quotations examples
We must discover where he lives, what he does — sleuth him, in fact!
1922, Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary
(obsolete, uncountable) Slowness; laziness, sloth.
(rare, collective) A group of bears. quotations
As quietly as if I were practicing to join a sleuth of bears, I crept out the door and went on home, eventually winding up in the garage…
1961, Noel Perrin, A Passport Secretly Green, page 89
If these dainty adventurers weren’t being chased by a sleuth of bears or bogeys, they were being captured by Gypsies or thieves.
1995, Bobbie Ann Mason, The Girl Sleuth, page 13
From the darkness came the howls of routs of wolves and bands of coyotes, the rumbling growls of a sleuth of bears or the bugles of a gang of elk.
2007, Elinor DeWire, The Lightkeepers’ Menagerie: Stories of Animals at Lighthouses, page 200