Word.ws English Dictionary

sawn-off shotgun

sawn-off shotgun noun: 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).

sawn-off shotgun: a shotgun whose barrel(s) has been shortened for ease of concealment and to give a larger spread,...
Image: Bluedog, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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 sawn-off shotgun

pluralsawn-off shotguns
alternative USsawed-off shotgun

Questions about sawn-off shotgun

What does sawn-off shotgun mean?
Sawn-off shotgun means 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).
What part of speech is sawn-off shotgun?
Sawn-off shotgun is a noun.
What is the plural of sawn-off shotgun?
The plural of sawn-off shotgun is sawn-off shotguns.

Words near sawn-off shotgun in the dictionary

  1. sawn logs
  2. sawn off
  3. sawn off the branch one was sitting on
  4. sawn wood
  5. sawn-off
  6. sawn-off shotgun
  7. sawn-off shotguns
  8. sawn-offs
  9. Sawndip
  10. sawney
  11. sawneys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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