CALLING ALL DETECTIVES

The term private eye alludes simply to private i (short for investigator). You may also call such a person a tec (short for detective), a

gumshoe (from quiet, rubber-soled footwear), a sleuth (from an Old Norse word for ‘trail’), a

shamus (of Yiddish origin), or a

hawkshaw (from a detective in the 1863 play The Ticket-of-Leave Man).