Word.ws English Dictionary

private detective

private detective noun: person who is not a government official who is hired to provide information about a person or group that is not widely available.

Noun

private detective (plural private detectives)

  1. Person who is not a government official who is hired to provide information about a person or group that is not widely available
    • So you're a private detective? I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors.1946, The Big Sleep (motion picture), spoken by Vivian (Lauren Bacall)

private detective meaning in Malayalam

private detective in Malayalam

private investigator, enquiry agent, private eye
സ്വകാര്യകുറ്റാന്വേഷകൻ, സ്വകാര്യ രഹസ്യാനേഷകൻ, സ്വന്തം നിലയിൽ അനേഷണങ്ങൾ നടത്തുന്നയാൾ, അപസർപ്പകൻ, പൃച്ഛകൻ, അനേഷകൻ

Synonyms of private detective

All synonyms of private detective

Forms of private detective

pluralprivate detectives

Questions about private detective

What does private detective mean?
Private detective means person who is not a government official who is hired to provide information about a person or group that is not widely available.
What is private detective in Malayalam?
Private detective in Malayalam is സ്വകാര്യകുറ്റാന്വേഷകൻ, സ്വകാര്യ രഹസ്യാനേഷകൻ, സ്വന്തം നിലയിൽ അനേഷണങ്ങൾ നടത്തുന്നയാൾ. See Private detective meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is private detective?
Private detective is a noun.
What is the plural of private detective?
The plural of private detective is private detectives.

Words near private detective in the dictionary

  1. private car
  2. private cars
  3. private cost
  4. private costs
  5. private credit
  6. private detective
  7. private detectives
  8. private dick
  9. private dicks
  10. private docent
  11. private docents

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: private detective (page history and authors); private detective (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-private detective.wav.

Cite this entry: “private detective.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/private_detective. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.