Definition of "private detective" []

• See private investigator. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A few months later he was known to have set up a private detective agency above a stamp shop on Rue Drouot."
• "The girl is Lucy Whitehall, and listen, I got a private detective to trace the calls."
• "I was also reading a lot of crime fiction and private detective fiction, writers like Hammett, Goodis, Chandler, Thompson."