usual suspects
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.86 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
4
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Major Strasser has been shot... round up the usual suspects."
- "I think the eco-utopian picture … is an unlikely outcome. I generally avoid over-population arguments. But there’s no question we’re in population overshoot. The catch is we’re not going to do anything about it. There will be no policy. The usual suspects: starvation, war, disease, will drive the population down. There’s little more to say about that really, and it’s certainly an unappetizing discussion, but it’s probably the truth. In any case, we’re in overshoot and we face vast resource scarcities. That’s it. The “usual suspects” are already doing their thing as worldwide food prices go up and peoples on the margin begin to suffer and starve."
- "And yet a quiet campaign is in the works to secure landmark protection for the 46-story limestone and glass tower. It is not being led by the usual suspects, like preservationists, community groups or politicians."
- "It was - to be only a little bit unfair - all the usual suspects at the Paris demo. Trotskyite students chanting against the patriarchy; anarchists; grizzled veterans of '68; plenty of pensioners; theatre-workers. In other words the regular left-wing alphabetti-spaghetti."
Etymology
The phrase was commonly used in New York in the 1930s, by both criminals and law enforcement, often with regard to baseless arrests. The phrase was popularized more broadly by its appearance in the film Casablanca (1942), especially since the 1990s.
Usage
Inflected Forms
the usual suspects (canonical, plural)