Meaning & use
gumshoe
Last updated
A detective, especially a private investigator; informal, somewhat old-fashioned slang.
See it in a sentence
The old film follows a gumshoe hired to track down a missing heiress.
He worked as a gumshoe for twenty years before retiring to write mystery novels.
A note on using this word
A dated but still recognizable slang term, strongly associated with hard-boiled detective fiction of the early-to-mid 20th century; the term comes from the rubber-soled shoes early detectives wore for quiet footsteps.
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