Shamus (name)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.