Word.ws English Dictionary

shoot the breeze

shoot the breeze verb: to chat idly or generally waste time talking.

Verb

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

  1. (US, idiomatic, slang) To chat idly or generally waste time talking.
    • We were just standing around shooting the breeze.
    • Oh, I've just been upstairs with your boss, shooting the breeze… shooting his fish.1989, Lethal Weapon 2 (motion picture), spoken by Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson)

shoot the breeze meaning in Vietnamese

shoot the breeze in Vietnamese

to chat idly or waste time talking
buôn dưa lê, chém gió

Synonyms of shoot the breeze

All synonyms of shoot the breeze

Forms of shoot the breeze

third-person singular presentshoots the breeze
present participleshooting the breeze
past participleshot the breeze
pastshot the breeze

Origin of shoot the breeze

A slang phrase, alluding to talking into the wind, and first recorded in 1919. In the variant, first recorded in 1908, the word bull is used instead of breeze, and means empty talk or lies.

Questions about shoot the breeze

What does shoot the breeze mean?
Shoot the breeze means to chat idly or generally waste time talking.
What is shoot the breeze in Vietnamese?
Shoot the breeze in Vietnamese is buôn dưa lê, chém gió. See Shoot the breeze meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is shoot the breeze?
Shoot the breeze is a verb.
What is the past tense of shoot the breeze?
The past tense of shoot the breeze is shot the breeze.

Words near shoot the breeze in the dictionary

  1. shoot oneself in the foot
  2. shoot out
  3. shoot outs
  4. shoot someone straight
  5. shoot the boots
  6. shoot the breeze
  7. shoot the bull
  8. shoot the cat
  9. shoot the five
  10. shoot the gold
  11. shoot the lens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoot the breeze (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shoot the breeze.ogg.

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