Sherlock.
An English surname transferred from the nickname.
Meaning & usage
An English surname transferred from the nickname.
A male given name transferred from the surname, of rare usage.
A detective, especially used sarcastically to address somebody who has stated the obvious.
— Where that arrow on the map says 'You are here', that must be where we are. — Yeah, well done Sherlock.
Where this word comes from
Supposedly from an Old English scir-locc (“bright-lock”). One of a group of surnames originally denoting hair colour, parallel to Blacklock, Harlock (Old English har (“grey”)), Silverlock. In the sense of “a detective”, from Sherlock Holmes. In the computing verb sense, refers to the software Sherlock, which in 2002 came to replicate some of the features of an earlier complementary program called Watson.
To deduce.
To search.
To obsolete a unique feature in third-party software by introducing a similar or identical feature to the OS or a first-party program/app.
Where this word comes from
Supposedly from an Old English scir-locc (“bright-lock”). One of a group of surnames originally denoting hair colour, parallel to Blacklock, Harlock (Old English har (“grey”)), Silverlock. In the sense of “a detective”, from Sherlock Holmes. In the computing verb sense, refers to the software Sherlock, which in 2002 came to replicate some of the features of an earlier complementary program called Watson.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.