Word of the Day:
whodunit
What It Means
A novel or drama concerning a crime (usually a murder) in which a detective follows clues to determine the perpetrator.
Whodunit in Context
“Actually, an whodunit is a mystery story. The hero is generally a detective, although sometimes he is a gentleman (apparently a mild mannered worm) who sallies forth at night to become Public Enemy No. One of Crime. Otherwise, the formula is exactly the same as that of the Cliff-hanger and follows...”
Did You Know?
Coined by critic Donald Gordon in 1930. An alteration and univerbation of who done it? with ellipsis of has.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whodunit (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “whodunit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whodunit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
