Word.ws English Dictionary

shoot the five

shoot the five verb: to fight in hand-to-hand combat.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive, slang) To fight in hand-to-hand combat.
    • As I grew older I was told to be tougher / Gotta shoot the five to survive but I'm a rapper2011 April 18, “Suffer” (0:21 from the start)performed by M.anifest
    • We'd sit there and they'd go at it and shoot the five until one dude was knocked out. It wasn't just entertainment for me like it was for most spectators. I wanted to watch so that I could learn.2018, U-God [Lamont Hawkins], Raw: My Journey Into the Wu-Tang, New York, N.Y.: Picador, →ISBN, page 31

Forms of shoot the five

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

Origin of shoot the five

In reference to the five fingers of a fist.

Questions about shoot the five

What does shoot the five mean?
Shoot the five means to fight in hand-to-hand combat.
What part of speech is shoot the five?
Shoot the five is a verb.
What is the past tense of shoot the five?
The past tense of shoot the five is shot the five.

Words near shoot the five in the dictionary

  1. shoot someone straight
  2. shoot the boots
  3. shoot the breeze
  4. shoot the bull
  5. shoot the cat
  6. shoot the five
  7. shoot the gold
  8. shoot the lens
  9. shoot the lights out
  10. shoot the messenger
  11. shoot the messenger boy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoot the five (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:

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