"sleuth" definition, meaning, and origin

Noun

A detective.
- 1908, Edith Van Dyne (Frank L. Baum), Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Millville Do ye want me to become a sleuth, or engage detectives to track the objects of your erroneous philanthropy?
- “This is a great piece of sleuth work for sure, and it significantly advances efforts to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who was not...
Synonyms: detective gumshoe investigator dick private eye
A sleuthhound; a bloodhound.
An animal’s trail or track.

Clipping of sleuthhound.

Slowness; laziness, sloth.
Synonyms: idleness inertia laziness lethargy sloth slothfulness
A group of bears.
- As quietly as if I were practicing to join a sleuth of bears, I crept out the door and went on home, eventually winding up in the garage… - 1961, Noel Perrin, A Passport Secretly Green, page 89:
- If these dainty adventurers weren’t being chased by a sleuth of bears or bogeys, they were being captured by Gypsies or thieves. - 1995, Bobbie Ann Mason, The Girl Sleuth, page 13:
- From the darkness came the howls of routs of wolves and bands of coyotes, the rumbling growls of a sleuth of bears or the bugles of a gang of elk. - 2007, Elinor DeWire, The Lightkeepers’ Menagerie: Stories of Animals...
Synonyms: sloth

From Old English slǣwþ, corresponding to slow + -th.

To act as a detective; to try to discover who committed a crime, or, more generally, to solve a mystery.
- We must discover where he lives, what he does — sleuth him, in fact! - 1922, Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary:
Synonyms: gumshoe shadow get to the bottom of solve work out absolve decipher iron out meliorate puzzle out ravel reason out resolve riddle sleuth tease out think out unpuzzle unravel unriddle unsolve upsolve Any from Thesaurus:untangle