Word.ws English Dictionary

private detectives

private detectives is the plural of private detective.

Meaning of private detective

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)

Questions about private detectives

What is private detectives the plural of?
Private detectives is the plural of private detective.

Words near private detectives in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: private detectives (page history and authors); private detective (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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