Although the word hitmen usually alludes to individual male perpetrators of a given kind of violence or crime, I have seen the word hitmen used to refer even to female individuals when such persons perpetrated the same kind of violence. Hitmen is a word nowadays used especially by newspaper headline writers even in Kenya and throughout the erstwhile British Empire. Although “hitmen” is a word which is quite common in popular fiction and other English language media, my computer dictionary — though the computer is English-made — completely rejects the word “hitman”. Howbeit, the word Whodunit (pronounced like “who done it” (which, indeed, is what Whodunit means) — is used by many producers of exciting popular fiction in the English language. Indeed, though Peter Cheyney taught me many English words and expressions, our high school teachers (practically all of them British) always vigorously played us against that novelist.

Source: Daily Nation November 22, 2019 20:37 UTC