Word.ws English Dictionary

shot heard round the world

shot heard round the world phrase: the opening volleys of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution.

Phrase

shot heard round the world

  1. The opening volleys of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution.
  2. The shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie on 28 June 1914 that was the casus belli of the Great War.
  3. A 1951 home run by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants
  4. (idiomatic) Any cataclysmic event

Forms of shot heard round the world

alternative formshot heard 'round the world

Origin of shot heard round the world

From the 1837 poem Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Questions about shot heard round the world

What does shot heard round the world mean?
Shot heard round the world means the opening volleys of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution.
What part of speech is shot heard round the world?
Shot heard round the world is a phrase.

Words near shot heard round the world in the dictionary

  1. shot garland
  2. shot garlands
  3. shot glass
  4. shot glasses
  5. shot heard 'round the world
  6. shot heard round the world
  7. shot holes
  8. shot in one's locker
  9. shot in the arm
  10. shot in the dark
  11. shot in the locker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shot heard round the world (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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