detective story
7
2.4
- noun
- /dɪˈtɛktɪv ˈstɔri/
- Literature
:
historia de detectives
- I've read enough detective stories to know that there must always be a motive.
- a classical detective story
- read a detective story
- an English detective story
It's just all your detective stories are the search for some sort of truth.
- It's just all your detective stories are the search for some sort of truth.
- And so anyway, so the crime scene, you know, we all watch these detective stories, right?
- My third grade, I was writing Timothy Mcbrown boy detective stories on narrow line paper and secretly handing them around the classroom.
- There are certain genres, for example, that we get in television that we get a lot of, for example, doctor dramas, legal dramas, detective stories.
- So the English midnight is almost switching to a detective story.
- And so he's he's actually giving you a little bit of a detective story about how he came up with this, this great poem.
Examples
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You hate detective stories.
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You seem to know a hell of a lot about detective stories, Inspector.
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I read it in a detective story.
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How do you write a detective story?
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One day I asked Jim to read a detective story about a murder.
Academic text (1992) -
"I'd like a hard-boiled detective story," he said.
Fiction book (1997) -
It's a detective story.
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Leo Strauss was a devotee of detective stories.
Academic text (2002) -
I read most of the classic detective stories in translation, then moved to hard-boiled mysteries and Kobo Abe.
Fiction book (2002) -
She enjoyed reading a detective story that featured a clever detective solving a complex crime.
Synonyms
137
3.2
A book, play, or film about solving a crime, often a murder
17
3.0
A story or film about a murder and finding who did it
11
7.7
A story about finding who committed a crime, often a murder
7
2.8
A book about a crime or puzzle that the reader tries to solve
5
2.7
A story about a crime in which a detective tries to find who did it
3
2.4
A book, play, or film about solving a crime, often a murder
How Complex
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'detective' (an investigator of crimes) with 'story' (a narrative). This noun+noun compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically regular, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase detective story paints a simple picture: a detective follows clues and the story shows how a crime is solved. That's why it means 'a story or novel in which a detective investigates and solves a crime'.