Word.ws English Dictionary

sawed-off shotgun

sawed-off shotgun is the alternative form of sawn-off shotgun.

Meaning of sawn-off shotgun

Noun

sawn-off shotgun (plural sawn-off shotguns)

  1. A shotgun whose barrel(s) has been shortened for ease of concealment and to give a larger spread, though with more limited range (often for illegal purposes).
    • I never really got there / I just pretended that I had / Words are blunt instruments / Words are sawn-off shotguns2007, “Jigsaw Falling into Place”, in In Rainbows, performed by Radiohead

Forms of sawed-off shotgun

pluralsawed-off shotguns

Questions about sawed-off shotgun

What is sawed-off shotgun the alternative form of?
Sawed-off shotgun is the alternative form of sawn-off shotgun.

Words near sawed-off shotgun in the dictionary

  1. sawed off
  2. sawed off the branch one was sitting on
  3. sawed the baby in half
  4. sawed wood
  5. sawed-off
  6. sawed-off shotgun
  7. sawed-off shotguns
  8. sawed-offs
  9. sawer
  10. sawers
  11. sawest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sawed-off shotgun (page history and authors); sawn-off shotgun (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: “sawed-off shotgun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sawed-off_shotgun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.