as in detective
a person not on the police force who investigates criminal or illicit activity or searches for missing persons
the couple paid a gumshoe to look for their missing son
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Examples Sentences
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Recent Examples of gumshoe
Amateur gumshoes such as myself assumed that the mouth prosthetic was merely leftover from the attempt to obfuscate which scenes starred Reynolds and which starred Adkins.
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Arye Dworken, Vulture, 26 July 2024
In the show, Wednesday star Emma Myers (with a solid British accent!) plays a teenage gumshoe who gets to the bottom of a homicide case years earlier in a small English village in this adaptation of Holly Jackson’s popular YA novel.
—Abid Rahman, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Aug. 2024
Obtaining that evidence was her goal when Andrea and her coterie of clumsy gumshoes marched up to the vacation cottage.
—Mara Bovsun, New York Daily News, 28 July 2024
In Chinatown and Shampoo, gumshoe J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Warren Beatty) end up alone.
—Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
See all Example Sentences for gumshoe 
Arye Dworken, Vulture, 26 July 2024
In the show, Wednesday star Emma Myers (with a solid British accent!) plays a teenage gumshoe who gets to the bottom of a homicide case years earlier in a small English village in this adaptation of Holly Jackson’s popular YA novel.
—Abid Rahman, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Aug. 2024
Obtaining that evidence was her goal when Andrea and her coterie of clumsy gumshoes marched up to the vacation cottage.
—Mara Bovsun, New York Daily News, 28 July 2024
In Chinatown and Shampoo, gumshoe J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Warren Beatty) end up alone.
—Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
See all Example Sentences for gumshoe
Thesaurus Entries Near gumshoe
Cite this Entry
“Gumshoe.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/gumshoe. Accessed 31 Dec. 2024.
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