sleuth

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a detective; to investigate or track down

   The amateur sleuth pieced together clues the police had missed.

Simplified etymology

Sleuth derives from a Scandinavian word whose earliest English meaning was the track or trail of a person or animal. It later appeared in sleuth-hound, a bloodhound used in medieval Scotland to track game or fugitives, and by the mid 19th century sleuth-hound, then American English sleuth, could mean a tracker or detective.

A shortening of sleuthhound ('bloodhound'), from sleuth ('track, trail'), from Old Norse sloth ('trail, track').

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary