Conan Doylish

See also: Conan-Doylish

English

Alternative forms

• Conan-Doylish

Etymology

From Conan Doyle +‎ -ish.

Adjective

Conan Doylish (comparative more Conan Doylish, superlative most Conan Doylish)

1. Resembling or characteristic of British writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who created the character Sherlock Holmes.
   • 1894 May 5, William Wallace, “New Novels”, in The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art., volume XLV, number 1148, London: Publishing Office: […], page 368, column 2:

     The impecunious position of the hero is cleverly sketched in the first pages; but the device that is resorted to by way of extricating him from it is deficient in true humour, even although it smacks of Conan Doylish ingenuity.

   • 1909 May, “A History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Nine”, in Pickout 1909: The Year Book of the Lowell Textile School, Lowell, Mass., page 33:

     This proved satisfactory to us, but we cannot quite comprehend why Dr. Wood so strenuously objected to our frequently tying down his dip, so it would not run away; or hiding his book bag so as to give him some experience in using his latent Conan Doylish deduction.

   • 1917 April 24, “Spirit of England Is Brought to U.S. Lobbies and Lounges of Washington Hotels Appear Like Halls of London.”, in The Champaign Daily News, volume XXII, number 229, Champaign, Ill., page twelve, column 3:

     After years of reading of Sherlock Holmes, it was rather expected to see a few Scotland Yard men with double-peaked plaid caps and curved pipe stems. The Scotland Yard men are here, but they are not at all “Conan Doylish.” Instead, they are dressed in correct frock coats and tall hats in strict contrast to the American secret service men, who appear like men just out of a business office or commercial house.

   • 1917 May, M. B. S., “Reviews: Misinforming a Nation. By W. H. Wright. […]”, in The Smith College Monthly, volume XXIV, number 7, pages 376–377:

     The sane dweller in the United States can hardly hope to succeed in the Conan Doylish task of looking at the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a British plot to deprive his mind of independence or to corrupt popular taste by some twenty expensive volumes, at their lightest, too heavy for his pocket.

   • 1925, The Literary Digest International Book Review, volume III, Funk & Wagnalls Company, page 553, column 1:

     Rose Macaulay, author of “Potterism,” “The Dangerous Age,” and “Orphan Island,” in an article in the London Nation and Athenæum, says: “The crude, stilted, Conan Doylish English of his detective stories goes far to bear out the common theory that Mr. Bramah has a literary dual personality.”

   • 1928, Godfrey Elton, Against the Sun, London: Constable & Co Ltd, page 52:

     Mind, I don’t know or care a rap about spiritualism, though this may sound Conan Doylish.

   • 1961 November 9, Park J. White, “It Ain’t Necessarily Fröhlich’s”, in The New England Journal of Medicine, volume 265, number 19, page 952, column 2:

     Ah, well, I must hear mamma out, — / How, using methods Conan Doylish, / So many doctors have no doubt / It’s Syndrom-e of Alfred Fröhlich.

   • 1979, Ralph E. Hone, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography, Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, →ISBN, page 42:

     Much of the plot—Stevensonian and Conan Doylish—is derived and formular: the author herself spoke of “lamentable lacunae . . . due to technical ignorance.”

   • 1982, Books and Bookmen, page 37, column 1:

     This old-fashioned narrative method (more 1913 than 1936) is immensely seductive in a Conan Doylish sort of way — especially when Condor turns out to have such a tale to tell.

   • 1984 May 5, Keith Wilson, “Burgess raises Clockwork man from the dead”, in The Weekend Citizen, Ottawa, Ont., page 44:

     Anthony Burgess’s Enderby triology is now a tetralogy, with a new volume “Composed to placate kind readers of The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby’s End, who objected to my casually killing my hero.” But this is no basely motivated literary opportunism, no Conan Doylish grave-robbery to repossess an obvious winner.

   • 1990, Russell Braddon, Funnelweb, London: Constable, →ISBN, page 127:

     Cheadle tapped Robinson’s last item with his pencil. ‘Spider webs?’ ‘A bit Conan Doylish, that one, sir.’ ‘Meaning you didn’t see any?’

   • 1997, Ian Donaldson, “Politic Picklocks: Reading Jonson Historically”, in Jonson’s Magic Houses: Essays in Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 128:

     In the more Conan Doylish of these studies, literature is regarded as if it were the scene of some recent large-scale crime, littered with clues—fingerprints, bloodstains, dropped wallets, spent bullets—all capable of undergoing forensic examination, and of supporting some Holmesian hunch which might ultimately lead to the apprehension of a culprit, the narration of a real-life story more absorbing than the fictional one which had lightly covered it.

   • 2002, Norman Lebrecht, The Song of Names, Review, →ISBN, page 13:

     Time for some pseudonyms. Can’t use X and Y – too Conan Doylish.

   • 2004 November 21, Alan Cheuse, “Michael Chabon’s deft tribute to novels of detection”, in Chicago Tribune, 158th year, number 326, section 14, page 4, columns 3–4:

     A wonderful setup of an opening chapter—Conan Doylish and yet quite stylish and Chabonesque in its own right.

   • 2020, Charles C Baines, The Grave Deception‎^[1], →ISBN:

     “[…] You were born, what, more than 20 years before me and in those days there would have been quite a few people who would have brewed their own real ale. As for the amount you drink, it can’t be too much because you don’t have a beer belly. How is that for a little detective work of my own?” “Well, your reasons are a little, may I say, Conan Doylish. Sherlock Holmes may well have used the same reasoning but, unfortunately those twenty odd years you mentioned so cruelly may have had something to do with the fact that I can no longer tolerate the beer I so loved in my youth, which was of course… real ale! […]”

Synonyms

• Conan Doylean