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gumshoe

noun
/ˈɡʌm.ʃuː/UK

Etymology

From gum + shoe.

  1. derived from scōn
  2. inherited from shon
  3. derived from *skek-✻
  4. inherited from *skōhaz✻
  5. inherited from *skōh✻
  6. inherited from sċōh
  7. inherited from scho
  8. compounded as gumshoe — “gum + shoe”

Definitions

  1. A sneaker or rubber overshoe.

  2. A detective.

    • "Who's this gumshoe guy from the bush league tailin' us?"
    • So how does Santa go up and down chimneys and keep his clothes clean? MAIRE NIC SUIBHNE and her junior gumshoes get their claws into assorted Messrs Claus and come up with an answer . . .

  3. To act as a detective.

    • The next thing they did was to send a man sent down there from Baltimore and he spent a good deal of time gumshoeing around in that county trying to get another individual put in as secretary-treasurer.
    • But these days, more and more women are gumshoeing through the pages of murder mysteries.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gumshoe. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA