Word.ws English Dictionary

shoot from the hip

shoot from the hip verb: to discharge a firearm while it is held near the hip, without taking time to aim via the gunsights.

Verb

shoot from the hip (third-person singular simple present shoots from the hip, present participle shooting from the hip, simple past and past participle shot from the hip)

  1. (literally) To discharge a firearm while it is held near the hip, without taking time to aim via the gunsights.
    • “As to their rifle fire, it was useless.” “They shoot from the hip, and don’t seem to aim at anything in particular.”1914, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The German War”, in The Contemptible Little Army
  2. (figuratively) To speak or act quickly based on first impressions, without carefully studying the background information, wider context, etc.
    • Trump is shooting from the hip, spraying insults 360 degrees, telling lies, stoking fears and making threats that many in our military and the F.B.I. would refuse to implement.2016 June 15, Thomas L. Friedman, “Opinion: Lessons of Hiroshima and Orlando”, in New York Times, retrieved 10 May 2018

Synonyms of shoot from the hip

Forms of shoot from the hip

third-person singular presentshoots from the hip
present participleshooting from the hip
past participleshot from the hip
pastshot from the hip

Words formed from shoot from the hip

Questions about shoot from the hip

What does shoot from the hip mean?
Shoot from the hip means to discharge a firearm while it is held near the hip, without taking time to aim via the gunsights.
What part of speech is shoot from the hip?
Shoot from the hip is a verb.
What is the past tense of shoot from the hip?
The past tense of shoot from the hip is shot from the hip.

Words near shoot from the hip in the dictionary

  1. shoot down
  2. shoot first and ask questions later
  3. shoot fly
  4. shoot for the moon
  5. shoot for the stars
  6. shoot from the hip
  7. shoot from the lip
  8. shoot holes
  9. shoot it out
  10. shoot me
  11. shoot off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoot from the hip (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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