murder mystery

noun

Simple meaning

A subgenre of crime fiction in which characters must investigate and solve a murder.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

murdermihsteree

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US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmɝdɚmɪstɚi

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

fiction
A subgenre of crime fiction in which characters must investigate and solve a murder.
games
A game in which one or more players are tasked with killing off all other players, who in turn must identify the murderers and vote them out or otherwise remove them from the game.

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (fiction) A subgenre of crime fiction in which characters must investigate and solve a murder.

Used this way, murder mystery is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.

Emotional tone: Negative
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Strong
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: Serious and weighty
Usage feel: Everyday but emotionally strong

Where it naturally appears

Personal/emotional discussion
Literature/storytelling

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.