investigatress

English

Etymology

From investigator +‎ -ess.

Noun

investigatress (plural investigatresses)

1. A female investigator.

   Synonym: investigatrix

   • 1895, [Frank Haak Lattin], “Second Year at Penikese; Laboratory Work, More Lectures, Familiar Daily Scenes, Recollections of Agassiz, Theodore Lyman on Fish Culture”, in Penikese: A Reminiscence, Albion, N.Y.: Frank H. Lattin, […], page 73:

     As many of these are microscopic, a most promising field will, without doubt, open to the investigators and investigatresses who shall enter therein.

   • 1903, Alexandre Dumas, translated by Henry L[lewellyn] Williams, “In the Dark”, in The Lovely Lady Hamilton (“Emma Lyonna”) or The Beauty and the Glory: An Historical Romance of Royalty and Revolution, New York, N.Y., London: Street & Smith, […], translation of La Sanfelice, page 62:

     The investigatress put aside the firearms with the letter as affording a clew.

     [original: La reine mit les pistolets à part avec la lettre, en attendant mieux; c’était un commencement d’indice qui pouvait conduire à la vérité.]

   • 1910 June 18, “Plays and Players”, in Brooklyn Life, volume XLI, number 1059, Brooklyn, N.Y., page 22:

     An “investigatress” comes to the institution and endeavors to prove the knight errant a thief. […] Maude Raymond as the investigatress does a most laughable imitation of Mrs. Fay, and made a decided appeal to the audience in several “coon songs.”

   • 1912, James Lane Allen, chapter II, in The Heroine in Bronze or A Portrait of a Girl: A Pastoral of the City, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, page 28:

     But the result of my study of the unaccountable beings of my own age is the belief that each of them puts her suitors to some same test. The suitors may never perceive what the test is: the investigatress knows admirably.

   • 1919 September 26, ““Chumps” Are the Consumer and Producer”, in The Labor Journal, volume XXVIII, number 22, Everett, Wash., page one, column 6:

     Mrs. Earl Fry bought a bushel basket of peaches for $3.60. In the bottom of the basket she found a note from a lady in Texas, saying that the basket had been sold for 50 cents and asking that she be notified of the cost price to the consumer. There is a lady in Texas who is surely an investigatress.

   • 1922 October 21, Bertram Atkey, “Winnie and the Panther Man”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 195, number 17, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Curtis Publishing Company, section VI, page 136:

     He had seen the advertisement of The Ray, the promised new journal of plain truth, he continued suavely, and if it chanced that she, Miss O’Wynn, was the talented investigatress who was writing the promised article on the alleged Morriston Colony mystery, he begged that she would grant him the favor, the very great favor, of an interview at the earliest possible moment.

   • 1937 February 3, “Women Vigilantes”, in Des Moines Tribune, volume 56, number 144, Des Moines, Ia., page six, column 1:

     Arizona’s new organization of vigilantes, the self-styled Women’s Investigating Committee of 500, has struck a snag early in its corporate efforts to purge state politics by compiling data on the “habits, conduct and acts” of public officials. When the Arizona Federation of Democratic Women’s Clubs publicly denounced the investigatresses, no hair was pulled because no one knew whose hair to pull.

   • 1937 March 4, “Where Do Dimes Go? Civic Agencies Will Probe Panhandlers: Discoveries Made Show Most Men Epicures”, in San Francisco Examiner, volume CLXVI, number 63, San Francisco, Calif., section II, page 18:

     Mrs. Ridinghouse says, “The men have come to their present state in life by way of a gradual descent from better days. They are epicures in wine, experts on women, and adept in song.” “Pay you next week sure,” is the phrase the men used when they could count on friends for loans of $5, explains Mrs. Ridinghouse. “But this state of affairs cannot go on forever,” says the investigatress. “They fall to the level of dimes eventually and at this point there is no promise of repayment made.”

   • 1941 June 1, Bill Henry, “By the Way”, in Los Angeles Times, volume LX, Los Angeles, Calif.: Times-Mirror Company, part II, page 1, column 1:

     WHERE TO DINE—Well, Mary Ward, our courageous gustatory investigatress, has finally completed her rounds of the eateries and, with her last despairing effort, dashed off this report on the road houses: […]

   • 1951, Victor Serge, translated by Willard R[opes] Trask, “Every Man Has His Own Way of Drowning”, in The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., translation of L’affaire Toulaév, page 146:

     The Deputy High Commissar for Security, the Prosecutor of the Supreme Tribunal, the Investigatress appointed to the most serious cases, waited for Fleischman to express his opinion.

     [original: Le haut-commissaire adjoint à la Sûreté, le procureur au Tribunal suprême, l’enquêteuse chargée des affaires de la plus haute gravité attendaient que Fleischman donnât son avis.]

   • 1968 June 28, Charles Champlin, “Movie Review: ‘Thomas Crown Affair’ at Grauman’s”, in Los Angeles Times, volume LXXXVII, Los Angeles, Calif., part IV, page 1:

     He also seduces a pretty insurance investigatress into connivance with him, and I was pretty glad about that, too.

   • 1984 June 26, Joyce Millman, “Romancing the Steele: While turning down Scarecrow and Mrs. King”, in The Boston Phoenix, Boston, Mass., section three, page 5, column 2:

     On TV, sleuthing and romance go together like Steed and Mrs. Peel, McMillan and Wife, Starsky and Hutch. There’s nothing like a ravishing murder or a lovely kidnapping to set sparks flying between investigator and investigatress, nothing like a weekly battle of wits as each flexes intellectually for the other.

   • 1986, Edward Topol, translated by Alan Myers, Red Gas, New York, N.Y.: Futura, translation of Красный газ [Krasnyj gaz], published 1987, →ISBN, page 79:

     As my investigatress Anna Kovina found out in Yaku-Tur, Voropayev had a pistol with him when he went whoring with his Nenka in the encampment.

     [original: Как выяснила в Яку-Туре моя следовательница Анна Ковина, у Воропаева, когда он ходил на б…ки к своей ненке в соседнее стойбище, был при себе пистолет.]

     Kak vyjasnila v Jaku-Ture moja sledovatelʹnica Anna Kovina, u Voropajeva, kogda on xodil na b…ki k svojej nenke v sosedneje stojbišče, byl pri sebe pistolet.

   • 1994, Glyn Maxwell, Blue Burneau, London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, pages 33, 130, and 147–148:

     – He’s disappeared at this time? – Is what I’m sayin’. Is what I’m sayin’. Is what I’m tellin’ your Island people. Is what I’m tellin’ the Investigatress, right? He’s gone. Dust. Nowhere’s where Bruno was, nowhere and quote me. […] My erstwhile colleagues did nothing to dissuade the Investigatress, the Prosecutor, the press and the public from this version of events, […] And, indeed, nothing could have given the OLB greater satisfaction than the fact that the Police, the Security Division, the Island Council, the Army, the Investigatress Dagmar Frock and the Mainland Government would all have to admit privately whatever public show they could mount around the scapegoat Pirir […]

   • 1999, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, “Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author”, in Lawrence E[liot] Klein, editor, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Cambridge, Cambs.: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 133:

     She gives to every inferior science its just rank, leaves some to measure sounds, others to scan syllables, others to weigh vacuums and define spaces and extensions, but reserves to herself her due authority and majesty, keeps her state and ancient title of Vitae Dux, Virtutis Indagatrix^RRR and the rest of those just appellations which of old belonged to her when she merited to be apostrophized, as she was, by the Orator: […] ^RRR Guide of life, Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.172; investigatress of virtue, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.5.

   • 2000 August 23, steve cassidy, “OUTED - from within. A very serious post and maybe ??? an awful warning (lon^[sic]”, in uk.people.bdsm‎^[1] (Usenet), archived from the original on 2023-11-10:

     Seems to me you would be very well advised to turn up to the next employment review with an employment law specialist: a few quid on the right kind of lawyer, to remind the investigatress of her obligations as the representative of your employers, seems in order.

   • 2006, J. D. Webb, Shepherd’s Pie, Richmond, Ky.: Wings ePress, Inc., →ISBN, page 7:

     Then your cell phone rang and you didn’t even hesitate. You picked it up and I knew I’d have to take a cab home before you ever said one word. I sometimes feel I’ve become Diana, the private investigatress. And I know that’s not a real word.

   • 2010 November 17, Jenny Armstrong, “Your TV Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures”, in Your Medway, number 164, Smeeth, Kent: Archant KOS Media, →ISSN, page 26:

     She collects about her an eclectic mixture of schoolchild helpers, from her adopted genetically-engineered-by-aliens boy genius son Luke to cheeky Clyde Langer and aspiring investigatress and headmaster’s daughter Rani Chandra.

   • 2021, Ira Nayman, “Immigration Can Be Murder!”, in Bad Actors (The Multiverse Refugees Trilogy: Second Pi in the Face)‎^[2], Dartford, Kent: Elsewhen Press, →ISBN:

     The Crime Scene Investigator (whom Joe and Bill still thought of as a Crime Scene Investigatress – they broke into the force at a more innocent time) – whose name was actually Malinka Moosemeat, but who had enough experience with the detectives to know better than to try and correct them – there weren’t enough hours in the day – responded, “Joe. Bill.”