Word.ws English Dictionary

shot from the hip

shot from the hip is the simple past and past participle of shoot from the hip.

Meaning of shoot from the hip

Verb

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

  1. (literally) To discharge a firearm while it is held near the hip, without taking time to aim via the gunsights.
    • “As to their rifle fire, it was useless.” “They shoot from the hip, and don’t seem to aim at anything in particular.”1914, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The German War”, in The Contemptible Little Army
  2. (figuratively) To speak or act quickly based on first impressions, without carefully studying the background information, wider context, etc.
    • Trump is shooting from the hip, spraying insults 360 degrees, telling lies, stoking fears and making threats that many in our military and the F.B.I. would refuse to implement.2016 June 15, Thomas L. Friedman, “Opinion: Lessons of Hiroshima and Orlando”, in New York Times, retrieved 10 May 2018

Questions about shot from the hip

What is shot from the hip the simple past and past participle of?
Shot from the hip is the simple past and past participle of shoot from the hip.

Words near shot from the hip in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shot from the hip (page history and authors); shoot from the hip (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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