Word.ws English Dictionary

Holmesy

Holmesy is the diminutive of Holmes.

Meaning of Holmes

Proper noun

Holmes

  1. A northern English surname from Middle English, variant of Holme.
    • Last year, a US appeals court upheld the convictions of Holmes and Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. It also upheld the $452 million in restitution that Holmes and Balwani were ordered to pay to victims.2026 January 21, Clare Duffy, Hadas Gold, “Elizabeth Holmes asks Trump to let her out of prison early”, in CNN Business, archived from the original on 23 Jan 2026
  2. Sherlock Holmes, fictional detective.
  3. by extension, someone acting like, or showing the ability of Sherlock Holmes.
  4. (rare) A male given name transferred from the surname.
  5. A hamlet in Tarleton parish, West Lancashire district, Lancashire, England (OS grid ref SD4319).
  6. A suburb of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England (OS grid ref SK4192).

See all 15 meanings of holmes

Adjective

Holmesy (comparative more Holmesy, superlative most Holmesy)

  1. (rare) Resembling or characteristic of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
    • There were detectives enough to populate a village. […] “Nothing Holmesy about those dicks,” he observed, sotto voce, to Rainfall. “They wouldn’t know a steamfitter from a country parson by his coat lapel;[…]”1931, Vincent Starrett, Dead Man Inside, The Crime Club, Inc., page 57
    • ‘Look, it was the first holiday I’d ever had in my life and I wanted it to be a real holiday, a real rest. I didn’t want to spend it interrogating a girl just on the basis of a Holmesy hunch, did I? I was tired.’1971, Adrian Mitchell, The Bodyguard, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 53

Synonyms of Holmesy

Forms of Holmesy

comparativemore Holmesy
superlativemost Holmesy

Origin of Holmesy

From Holmes + -y (diminutive suffix).

From Holmes + -y (adjectival suffix).

Phrases with Holmesy

Questions about Holmesy

What does Holmesy mean?
Holmesy means resembling or characteristic of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
What is Holmesy the diminutive of?
Holmesy is the diminutive of Holmes.
What part of speech is Holmesy?
Holmesy is an adjective.

Words near Holmesy in the dictionary

  1. Holmesian
  2. Holmesiana
  3. Holmesians
  4. Holmesish
  5. Holmesville
  6. Holmesy
  7. Holmethorpe
  8. Holmewood
  9. Holmfield
  10. Holmfirth
  11. holmgang

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Holmesy (page history and authors); Holmes (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: “Holmesy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holmesy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.