gumshoe

English
WOTD – 16 August 2010
Gumshoe (sneaker or rubber overshoe).

Etymology

gum +‎ shoe[1]

Pronunciation
  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈɡʌm.ʃuː/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)

Noun

gumshoe (plural gumshoes)

  1. A sneaker or rubber overshoe. [from mid 19th c.]
  2. (slang, Canada, US) A detective. [from early 20th c.]
    Synonyms: detective, dick, private eye, sleuth
    • 1920, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 20, in The Big-Town Round-Up:
      "Who's this gumshoe guy from the bush league tailin' us?"

Translations

Verb

gumshoe (third-person singular simple present gumshoes, present participle gumshoeing, simple past and past participle gumshoed)

  1. (slang) To act as a detective.
    • 1933, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Agriculture, Hearings‎, page 25:
      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.
    • 1988 September 23, Achy Obejas, “Calendar”, in Chicago Reader:
      " But these days, more and more women are gumshoeing through the pages of murder mysteries.

Translations

References
  1. “gumshoe” (US) / “gumshoe” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.

Anagrams
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