investigatress

plural investigatresses

1. A female investigator.

   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.

   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

   5 more examples

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

   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

   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.”

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

   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.

   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

   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.

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

   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.

   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

   Synonyms: investigatrix