Sherlock
/ˈʃəːlɒk
/noun informal
A person who investigates mysteries or shows great perceptiveness: it doesn’t take a Sherlock to figure out that she’s lying to me...
- For example, jokes are remarkably unreliable laugh-getters, especially among North Americans, who were least likely to find jokes funny, according to the humor Sherlocks in Britain.
- One of the Sherlocks wrote, asking whether his solution was correct, and if he would have gained entry, and I responded.
Derivatives
Sherlockian
- But the great service that Klinger and the sharp-sighted Sherlockians whose work he draws on perform is to bring to light the astonishing carelessness with which the Holmes stories were written.
- I'm not sure that the true Sherlockian will want the new novel to reveal too much.
- In Sherlockian parlance, we could call this The Curious Case of the Forgotten Corpse.
Origin
Early 20th century: from Sherlock Holmes (see Holmes, Sherlock).