house detective

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See also: house-detective

English

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Alternative forms

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Noun

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house detective (plural house detectives)

  1. A person employed by a privately owned establishment, such as a hotel or large retail store, with the job of preventing wrongdoing and apprehending violators of laws or other regulations.
    • 1920, Frank L. Packard, chapter 21, in The White Moll:
      I went to Cloran, the house detective at the hotel here in New York where Deemer was murdered.
    • 2005 April 24, Denis Horgan, “The scene of the South”, in Spartanburg Herald-Journal, US, retrieved 6 Feb. 2010:
      I am usually uncomfortable in such five-star, five-diamond places. . . . I'm afraid I'll break something. Or be found out, collared by the house detective as an interloper unworthy of the surroundings.

See also

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References

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