private eye

Questions about private eye

What does private eye mean?

private eye means "someone who can be employed as a detective to collect information".

What is another word for private eye?

Close synonyms include private detective, PI, private investigator, operative, shamus. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is private eye a common word?

private eye is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.