Word.ws English Dictionary

shooting iron

shooting iron noun: a firearm, especially a handgun.

Noun

shooting iron (plural shooting irons)

  1. (US, colloquial, dated) A firearm, especially a handgun.
    • "It ain't the rifle, Harry," Sam said good-temperedly; "it is the eye that is wrong, not the shooting-iron."1895, G. A. Henty, chapter 15, in In the Heart Of The Rockies
    • Look like a fool walking about with an empty shooting-iron in my hand.1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter XXV, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 267

Forms of shooting iron

pluralshooting irons
alternative formshooting-iron

Questions about shooting iron

What does shooting iron mean?
Shooting iron means a firearm, especially a handgun.
What part of speech is shooting iron?
Shooting iron is a noun.
What is the plural of shooting iron?
The plural of shooting iron is shooting irons.

Words near shooting iron in the dictionary

  1. shooting ground
  2. shooting grounds
  3. shooting guard
  4. shooting guards
  5. shooting holes
  6. shooting iron
  7. shooting irons
  8. shooting match
  9. shooting matches
  10. shooting off
  11. shooting off at the mouth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shooting iron (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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