Word.ws English Dictionary

longshot

longshot is the alternative spelling of long shot.

Meaning of long shot

Noun

long shot (plural long shots)

  1. A shot fired at a distant target.
    • "It is of course a most foolish thing twice to take a long shot in a capercailzie wood, as you know," said the captain, appealing to me; "but the last time I had no choice, because I heard that villainous Andreas stalking the bird at the same time."1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 74
  2. (idiomatic) Something unlikely; something that has little chance of happening or working; long odds.
    • We can try your plan, but it's a long shot and it probably won't work.
  3. A master shot, the primary wide shot of a scene into which the closeups will be edited later.
  4. Synonym of long take; a single, continuous shot that lasts for an unusually long duration without any cuts.

Forms of longshot

plurallongshots

Origin of longshot

From long + shot.

Questions about longshot

What is longshot the alternative spelling of?
Longshot is the alternative spelling of long shot.

Words near longshot in the dictionary

  1. longshorepersons
  2. Longshores
  3. longshorewoman
  4. longshorewomen
  5. longshoring
  6. longshot
  7. longshots
  8. longshucks
  9. Longside
  10. longsight
  11. longsighted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: longshot (page history and authors); long shot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “longshot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/longshot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.