Word.ws English Dictionary

shamuses

shamuses is the plural of shamus.

Meaning of shamus

Noun

shamus (plural shamuses or shami)

  1. (US, slang) A private detective; originally, a policeman or police detective.
    • “That's what you're here for. Didn't your aunt tell you? She wants you to follow Wilbert Cream and Phyllis about everywhere and see that he doesn't get a chance of proposing.”
      “You mean that I'm to be a sort of private eye or shamus, tailing them up? I don't like it,” I said dubiously.1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter IV

Questions about shamuses

What is shamuses the plural of?
Shamuses is the plural of shamus.

Words near shamuses in the dictionary

  1. Shamsher Jang
  2. shamshir
  3. shamshirs
  4. shamstep
  5. shamus
  6. shamuses
  7. Shamva
  8. ShamWow
  9. ShamWows
  10. Shamy
  11. shamyana

Source and license

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