Word.ws English Dictionary

Conan Doylish

Conan Doylish adjective: resembling or characteristic of British writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who created the character Sherlock Holmes.

Adjective

Conan Doylish (comparative more Conan Doylish, superlative most Conan Doylish)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of British writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who created the character Sherlock Holmes.
    • The impecunious position of the hero is cleverly sketched in the first pages; but the device that is resorted to by way of extricating him from it is deficient in true humour, even although it smacks of Conan Doylish ingenuity.1894 May 5, William Wallace, “New Novels”, in The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art., volume XLV, number 1148, London: Publishing Office: […], page 368, column 2
    • This proved satisfactory to us, but we cannot quite comprehend why Dr. Wood so strenuously objected to our frequently tying down his dip, so it would not run away; or hiding his book bag so as to give him some experience in using his latent Conan Doylish deduction.1909 May, “A History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Nine”, in Pickout 1909: The Year Book of the Lowell Textile School, Lowell, Mass., page 33
    Synonyms:
    Conan Doylean

Examples of Conan Doylish in a sentence

  • Mind, I don’t know or care a rap about spiritualism, though this may sound Conan Doylish.1928, Godfrey Elton, Against the Sun, London: Constable & Co Ltd, page 52:
  • Ah, well, I must hear mamma out, — / How, using methods Conan Doylish, / So many doctors have no doubt / It’s Syndrom-e of Alfred Fröhlich.1961 November 9, Park J. White, “It Ain’t Necessarily Fröhlich’s”, in The New England Journal of Medicine, volume 265, number 19, page 952...
  • Much of the plot—Stevensonian and Conan Doylish—is derived and formular: the author herself spoke of “lamentable lacunae . . . due to technical ignorance.”1979, Ralph E. Hone, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography, Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, →ISBN, page 42:
  • This old-fashioned narrative method (more 1913 than 1936) is immensely seductive in a Conan Doylish sort of way — especially when Condor turns out to have such a tale to tell.1982, Books and Bookmen, page 37, column 1:

Synonyms of Conan Doylish

Forms of Conan Doylish

comparativemore Conan Doylish
superlativemost Conan Doylish
alternative formConan-Doylish

Origin of Conan Doylish

From Conan Doyle + -ish.

Questions about Conan Doylish

What does Conan Doylish mean?
Conan Doylish means resembling or characteristic of British writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who created the character Sherlock Holmes.
How do you use Conan Doylish in a sentence?
Mind, I don’t know or care a rap about spiritualism, though this may sound Conan Doylish.
What part of speech is Conan Doylish?
Conan Doylish is an adjective.

Words near Conan Doylish in the dictionary

  1. conamed
  2. conames
  3. conaming
  4. Conan
  5. Conan Doylean
  6. Conan Doylish
  7. Conan the Bacterium
  8. Conan-Doylish
  9. Conanicut Island
  10. conanine
  11. Conant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Conan Doylish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Conan Doylish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/conan_doylish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.