shoot

• IPA^(key): /ʃuːt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːt
• Homophone: chute

From Middle English shoten, from Old English scēotan, from Proto-Germanic *skeutaną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kéwd-e-ti, from *(s)kewd- (“to shoot, throw”). Cognate with West Frisian sjitte, Low German scheten, Dutch schieten, German schießen, Danish skyde, Norwegian Bokmål skyte, Norwegian Nynorsk skyta, Swedish skjuta; and also, through Indo-European, with Russian кида́ть (kidátʹ), Albanian hedh (“to throw, toss”), Persian چست‎‎ (čost, “quick, active”), Lithuanian skudrùs.

shoot (third-person singular simple present shoots, present participle shooting, simple past shot, past participle shot or (rare) shotten)

1. To launch a projectile.
   1. (transitive) To fire (a weapon that releases a projectile).

      to shoot a gun

   2. (transitive) To fire (a projectile).

      Synonym: loose (of an arrow)

      • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

        If you please / To shoot an arrow that self way.

   3. (transitive) To fire a projectile at (a person or target).

      The man, in a desperate bid for freedom, grabbed his gun and started shooting anyone he could.

      The hunter shot the deer to harvest its meat.

   4. (intransitive) To cause a weapon to discharge a projectile.

      They shot at a target.

      He shoots better than he rides.

   5. (transitive, slang) To ejaculate.

      After a very short time, he shot his load over the carpet.

   6. (intransitive, usually, as imperative) To begin to speak.

      "Can I ask you a question?"   "Shoot."

   7. (intransitive) To discharge a missile; said of a weapon.

      The gun shoots well.

   8. (transitive, figuratively) To dismiss or do away with.

      His idea was shot on sight.

   9. (transitive, intransitive, analogous) To photograph.

      He shot the couple in a variety of poses.

      He shot seventeen stills.

      • 2006, Michael Grecco, Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait, Amphoto Books, →ISBN, page 68:

        I had the pleasure of shooting Arnold Newman while teaching across the hall from him at a summer photo workshop.

   10. (transitive, intransitive, analogous, film, television) To film.

       The film was mostly shot in France.

2. To move or act quickly or suddenly.
   1. (intransitive) To move very quickly and suddenly.

      After an initial lag, the experimental group's scores shot past the control group's scores in the fourth week.

      • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

        There shot a streaming lamp along the sky.

      • 1884: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter VII

        It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.

      • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 8, in The Celebrity:

        Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges […] : or anon we shot into a clearing, with a colored glimpse of the lake and its curving shore far below us.

   2. To go over or pass quickly through.

      shoot the rapids

      • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

        She […] shoots the Stygian sound.

      • 2005, R. G. Crouch, The Coat: The Origin and Times of Doggett's Famous Wager (page 40)

        It was approaching the time when watermen would not shoot the bridge even without a passenger aboard.

   3. (transitive) To tip (something, especially coal) down a chute.
   4. (transitive) To penetrate, like a missile; to dart with a piercing sensation.

      a shooting pain in my leg

      • (Can we date this quote?) Joseph Addison

        Thy words shoot through my heart.

   5. (obsolete, intransitive) To feel a quick, darting pain; to throb in pain.
      • (Can we date this quote?) George Herbert

        These preachers make / His head to shoot and ache.

   6. (obsolete) To change form suddenly; especially, to solidify.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

        If the menstruum be overcharged, metals will shoot into crystals.

      • (Can we date this quote?) Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query VII.

        The north-east [wind] is loaded with vapor, insomuch, that the salt-makers have found that their crystals would not shoot while that blows.

   7. To send out or forth, especially with a rapid or sudden motion; to cast with the hand; to hurl; to discharge; to emit.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Beaumont and Fletcher

        an honest weaver as ever shot shuttle

      • (Can we date this quote?) Thomas Macaulay

        a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores

   8. (informal, transitive) To send to someone.

      I'll shoot you an email with all the details

3. (sports) To act or achieve.
   1. (wrestling) To lunge.
   2. (professional wrestling) To deviate from kayfabe, either intentionally or accidentally; to actually connect with unchoreographed fighting blows and maneuvers, or speak one's mind (instead of an agreed script).
   3. To make the stated score.

      In my round of golf yesterday I shot a 76.

4. (surveying) To measure the distance and direction to (a point).
5. (transitive, intransitive, colloquial) To inject a drug (such as heroin) intravenously.
6. To develop, move forward.
   1. To germinate; to bud; to sprout.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

        Onions, as they hang, will shoot forth.

      • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

        But the wild olive shoots, and shades the ungrateful plain.

   2. To grow; to advance.

      to shoot up rapidly

      • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

        Well shot in years he seemed.

      • (Can we date this quote?) James Thomson

        Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, / To teach the young idea how to shoot.

   3. (nautical) To move ahead by force of momentum, as a sailing vessel when the helm is put hard alee.
   4. To push or thrust forward; to project; to protrude; often with out.

      A plant shoots out a bud.

      • Bible, Psalms xxii. 7

        They shoot out the lip, they shake the head.

      • (Can we date this quote by John Dryden?)

        Beware the secret snake that shoots a sting.

7. To protrude; to jut; to project; to extend.

   The land shoots into a promontory.

   • 2019 February 5, Oliver Wainwright, “Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich”, in The Guardian‎:

     There is 432 Park Avenue, a surreal square tube of white concrete that appears to shoot twice as high as anything around it, its endless Cartesian grid of windows framing worlds of solid marble bathtubs and climate-controlled wine cellars within.

   • 1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers Chapter 49

     There shot up against the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling houses.

8. (carpentry) To plane straight; to fit by planing.
   • 1677, Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-works

     two Pieces of Wood are Shot (that is Plained) or else they are Pared […] with a Pairing-chissel

9. To variegate as if by sprinkling or intermingling; to color in spots or patches.^W
   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Tennyson

     The tangled water courses slept, / Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:shoot.

• → Catalan: xut
• → Greek: σουτ (sout)
• → Persian: شوت‎ (šut)
• → Romanian: șut
• → Vietnamese: sút

shoot (plural shoots)

1. The emerging stem and embryonic leaves of a new plant.
   • Evelyn

     Superfluous branches and shoots of this second spring.

2. A photography session.
3. A hunt or shooting competition.
4. (professional wrestling, slang) An event that is unscripted or legitimate.
5. The act of shooting; the discharge of a missile; a shot.
   • Francis Bacon

     The Turkish bow giveth a very forcible shoot.

   • Drayton

     One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk.

6. A rush of water; a rapid.
7. (mining) A vein of ore running in the same general direction as the lode.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

8. (weaving) A weft thread shot through the shed by the shuttle; a pick.
9. A shoat; a young pig.
10. An inclined plane, either artificial or natural, down which timber, coal, etc., are caused to slide; a chute.

• (hunt or shooting competition): turkey shoot

• Catalan: xut
• Portuguese: chuto

Minced oath for shit.

shoot

1. A mild expletive, expressing disbelief or disdain

   Didn't you have a concert tonight?

   Shoot! I forgot! I have to go and get ready...

• (mild expletive): darn, dash, fiddlesticks, shucks, sugar

• Hoots, Htoos, Sotho, hoots, sooth, toosh