How to Use gumshoe in a Sentence

gumshoe

noun
  • Poonam ran up the stairs in search of the bumbling gumshoes.
    Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, 3 Aug. 2017
  • The old gumshoe trope is one Knopfler works every so often.
    Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle, 7 Sep. 2019
  • In a landscape of hardened and rugged gumshoes, Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott) is one with a lot of heart.
    Ew Staff, EW.com, 17 Mar. 2023
  • But any gumshoe worth her salt knows that a closer look reveals that there is more to the story.
    Husna Haq, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 June 2018
  • Down there, a new law would require doctors to go gumshoe on the private lives of their patients.
    Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 30 Mar. 2017
  • The Mystery of the Carnival Caper (1998) enabled me to live out my girl-gumshoe dreams.
    Drew Dakessian, Wired, 2 Mar. 2021
  • The producer misplaces some of his music, and the player becomes a gumshoe on the case hunting for the lost tunes.
    Elias Leight, Rolling Stone, 15 Dec. 2021
  • Bertin and Forbes ditch most of the gumshoes, sending just a pair of them (Pauline, jut-jawed Brennan) on a fresh and equally loopy adventure.
    New York Times, 14 Feb. 2020
  • Count on Japanese gumshoes to soon start setting their traps.
    Fortune, 10 Jan. 2020
  • Modern-dress spins on old gumshoes are now all the rage; ask Daniel Craig or Benedict Cumberatch.
    A.a. Dowd, Chron, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Smith here shows the breadth of his acting abilities as the laconic gumshoe Deuce Cooper.
    Tony Lacy-Thompson, The Mercury News, 18 May 2017
  • Yes, that’s right, the emergence of self-driving cars has all the makings of being a kind of modern-day gumshoe that can be a devout crime fighter.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 22 May 2021
  • An amateur gumshoe, following the woozy clinking of the out-of-tune jingle, caught up with him near a park in Cobble Hill.
    Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2020
  • But there’s also enough that’s novel about the show’s cerebral gumshoes to keep viewers rapt, and likely hoping for more.
    John Anderson, WSJ, 16 Jan. 2020
  • The gumshoe is a former cop with 50 years of experience and an 87% success rate, according to Goncalves.
    Rebecca Rosenberg, Fox News, 13 Dec. 2022
  • No, Mute commits the far worse sin of simply being dull, and running through its amateur gumshoe plot with a curious lack of zeal.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 23 Feb. 2018
  • Ultimately, the judge decided to keep the gumshoe locked up pending trial.
    Mario Ariza, sun-sentinel.com, 8 Dec. 2020
  • These citizen reporters use the gumshoe techniques depended on by the best muckrakers in their craft.
    Andrew Beaton, WSJ, 12 Dec. 2017
  • In the series, Prioress does a lot more gumshoe investigating.
    Tracy Brown, Los Angeles Times, 29 July 2022
  • To weed it out, elite operatives hunt in the shadows, deploying drones, social-media and old-fashioned gumshoe tactics in a quest to thwart spies and traitors.
    Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times, 19 July 2019
  • The 70-year-old gumshoe reportedly cracked his head on the pavement outside his Haight-Ashbury home when muggers yanked a new camera from around his neck Thursday.
    Michael Ruiz, Fox News, 31 Jan. 2021
  • Still, Smith has willingly sacrificed his offense and embraced his role as a basketball gumshoe, tailing and shadowing those who mean to do harm to the Cavs.
    Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 9 May 2017
  • Likewise, there were millions who, in the waning days of the campaign, clicked happily on a salacious dossier of anti-Trump material gathered by gumshoes in an effort to stop him.
    David Von Drehle, Time, 13 July 2017
  • Yearling Sammy Keyes There have been plenty of kid detectives over the years, particularly high school gumshoes.
    Maureen Lee Lenker and Devan Coggan, EW.com, 14 Mar. 2023
  • Robert Zemeckis’s groundbreaking 1988 fantasy-noir blends live-action and animation to tell the tale of a gumshoe (Bob Hoskins) trying to clear the name of a cartoon rabbit named Roger, who’s been framed for murder.
    Nick Schager, Esquire, 26 Feb. 2018
  • Spoiler alert: at the end of the movie, almost everyone’s kicked the bucket, leaving Jack Nicholson’s wearied gumshoe to ponder the bleak lesson that power stays with those in power and nothing really changes.
    Rachel Brown, National Geographic, 10 Mar. 2017
  • Rob Thomas' plucky teenage gumshoe has grown up and moved to Hulu for her latest, largely disappointing, investigation.
    Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 July 2019
  • For weeks, digital gumshoes trawled the Internet, building a case that a political operative who drove for Uber was working on behalf of the Russians.
    Sue Halpern, The New Yorker, 1 Oct. 2019
  • Mystery games give everyday gumshoes an opportunity to practice their sleuthing, or evade capture by role-playing the suspect.
    Popular Science, 8 Apr. 2020
  • As the script loses its nimble dialogue, Rock sheds his snappier early mixture of smart stand-up and steely-eyed gumshoe for an unsuccessful pouty-faced exterior.
    Robert Daniels, Los Angeles Times, 13 May 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gumshoe.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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