Word.ws English Dictionary

shot first and asked questions later

shot first and asked questions later is the simple past and past participle of shoot first and ask questions later.

Meaning of shoot first and ask questions later

Verb

shoot first and ask questions later (third-person singular simple present shoots first and asks questions later, present participle shooting first and asking questions later, simple past and past participle shot first and asked questions later)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To take hasty, immediate action with serious consequences, without first adequately investigating the situation.
  2. (US, idiomatic) To act boldly.
    • “These companies are shooting first and asking questions later,” Ms. [Robin] Feldman said. “The field is expanding much faster than the legal system can keep up with. Some of the decisions being made along the way end up biting the companies that have made those decisions.”2025 December 2, Cade Metz, quoting Robin Feldman, “Silicon Valley Builds Amazon and Gmail Copycats to Train A.I. Agents”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN...

Questions about shot first and asked questions later

What is shot first and asked questions later the simple past and past participle of?
Shot first and asked questions later is the simple past and past participle of shoot first and ask questions later.

Words near shot first and asked questions later in the dictionary

  1. shot clocks
  2. shot cup
  3. shot cups
  4. shot daggers
  5. shot down
  6. shot first and asked questions later
  7. shot for the moon
  8. shot from the hip
  9. shot from the lip
  10. shot garland
  11. shot garlands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shot first and asked questions later (page history and authors); shoot first and ask questions later (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: “shot first and asked questions later.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shot_first_and_asked_questions_later. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.