Word.ws English Dictionary

shooting off

shooting off is the present participle and gerund of shoot off.

Meaning of shoot off

Verb

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

  1. (colloquial) To leave quickly.
    • I have to shoot off: my interview starts in under an hour.
    Synonyms:
    shoot
  2. (idiomatic) To do (something, usually a written or verbal communication) quickly, and without hesitation or forethought.
    • In other situations, you might know someone who adds colour with personal anecdotes and feelings. You could shoot off a similar response – perhaps including a short story of your own to hammer home your point.2020 December 21, Bryan Lufkin, “How 'linguistic mirroring' can make you more convincing”, in BBC
  3. To overshoot the bounds of a set when filming, showing part of what lies outside it.
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shoot, off.
    • His arm got shot off in the war.

Questions about shooting off

What is shooting off the present participle and gerund of?
Shooting off is the present participle and gerund of shoot off.

Words near shooting off in the dictionary

  1. shooting holes
  2. shooting iron
  3. shooting irons
  4. shooting match
  5. shooting matches
  6. shooting off
  7. shooting off at the mouth
  8. shooting off one's mouth
  9. shooting one in the sink
  10. shooting one's bolt
  11. shooting one's cuffs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shooting off (page history and authors); shoot off (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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Cite this entry: “shooting off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shooting_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.