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
Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 16 July 2025
The novel is a whodunit, but to reduce it entirely to that distinction would be inaccurate.
—Book Marks
june 26, Literary Hub, 26 June 2025
Daniel Craig will return as Benoit Blanc in 2025’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, reuniting with franchise writer and director Rian Johnson for another twisted whodunit.
—Jack Smart, People.com, 1 June 2025
There's a delicious whodunit aspect to it, too, as the list of five potentially traitorous suspects includes the operative's own high-profile wife (Cate Blanchett).
—Brian Truitt, USA Today, 4 July 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 29 Jul. 2025.
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whodunit
noun
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