Word.ws English Dictionary

shot caller

shot caller noun: someone in charge, especially the leader of a street gang.

Noun

shot caller (plural shot callers)

  1. (slang) Someone in charge, especially the leader of a street gang.
    • 'Cause I'm the creepy crawler that be crawling your walls / And I'm the shot caller when it comes to shot calls2004, “Oh Word?”, in To the 5 Boroughs, performed by Beastie Boys
    • Antonio Ramirez,^([sic]) is a shot caller (a leader) of the A Street gang, a powerful criminal organization in the southern part of the state.2009, Samuel H. Pillsbury, How Criminal Law Works: A Conceptual and Practical Guide, page 346
  2. (US, slang) A prison inmate who holds informal authority over other inmates and who masterminds criminal activity.
    • […] the CDC's campaign to isolate other "shot callers" in its new generation of super maximum security prisons.2000, Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, page 198
    • A hotbed for fights and race riots has long been California's Pitchess Detention Center, a Los Angeles County prison. These battles are masterminded by tattooed gang leaders called shot callers.2014, Carl Sifakis, The Encyclopedia of American Prisons, page 236

Forms of shot caller

pluralshot callers
alternative formshot-caller
alternative formshotcaller

Origin of shot caller

Deverbal from call the shots.

Questions about shot caller

What does shot caller mean?
Shot caller means someone in charge, especially the leader of a street gang.
What part of speech is shot caller?
Shot caller is a noun.
What is the plural of shot caller?
The plural of shot caller is shot callers.

Words near shot caller in the dictionary

  1. shot around
  2. shot back
  3. shot blasting
  4. shot box
  5. shot boxes
  6. shot caller
  7. shot callers
  8. shot clock
  9. shot clocks
  10. shot cup
  11. shot cups

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shot caller (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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