whodunit
noun
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In 1930, Donald Gordon, a book reviewer for News of Books, needed to come up with something to say about a rather unremarkable mystery novel called Half-Mast Murder. "A satisfactory whodunit," he wrote. The relatively new term (introduced only a year earlier) played fast and loose with spelling and grammar, but whodunit caught on anyway. Other writers tried respelling it who-done-it, and one even insisted on using whodidit, but those sanitized versions lacked the punch of the original and fell by the wayside. Whodunit became so popular that by 1939 at least one language pundit had declared it "already heavily overworked" and predicted it would "soon be dumped into the taboo bin." History has proven that prophecy false, and whodunit is still going strong.
Examples of whodunit in a Sentence
Lexy Perez, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Mar. 2025
To add to the information overload, there are flashbacks, self-aware references to classic whodunits, digressions into White House lore presumably mined from Kate Andersen Brower’s book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, which inspired the show.
—Judy Berman, TIME, 20 Mar. 2025
Creator Raphael Montes has borrowed plot points from classic telenovelas and saved the best for last, turning it into a whodunit.
—Armando Tinoco, Deadline, 18 Mar. 2025
Granted, Peacock’s reality-show whodunit once again had plenty of human breakout stars.
—Caroline Framke, Vulture, 7 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for whodunit
Cite this Entry
“Whodunit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whodunit. Accessed 28 Mar. 2025.
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whodunit
noun
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