sherlock

The story

1. Old English · derived fromscir-locc“bright-lock”
2. English todaySherlock

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.

First known use, by meaning

• from 2002 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.