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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Recent Examples of gumshoe
Netflix has ordered a second season of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, with Wednesday star Emma Myers returning as a teenage gumshoe who gets to the bottom of murder cases in a small English village.
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Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov. 2024
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.
—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
See all Example Sentences for gumshoe 
Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov. 2024
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.
—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
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 20 Jan. 2025.
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