Shamus (name)

Shamus (name)

Shamus ("shaw" mus, -"shay") [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shamus] (archaic) was an American slang term for a police officer or private detective, probably from the Yiddish "shamess", meaning "caretaker"; it may also have been influenced by the Irish name "Seamus". It was occasionally used in the novels of Raymond Chandler as a somewhat derogatory name for the detective Philip Marlowe. It is also regularly used by James Hadley Chase in several novels, especially in a A Coffin From Hong Kong, where the protagonist is repeatedly addressed by this term by a hostile police-chief.

Shamus is also the name of a character in John le Carre's novel The Naive and Sentimental Lover.

The phrase was also used in the film The Big Sleep, and in The Big Lebowski (in part a tribute to "The Big Sleep") in succession to several other synonyms for detective.


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