Word.ws English Dictionary

shot with a shovel

shot with a shovel adjective: severely admonished; castigated.

Adjective

shot with a shovel (not comparable)

  1. (Ireland) Severely admonished; castigated.
    • I don't approve of petticoat government, as a general thing, but I'll be shot with a shovel if it ain't necessary with fellows like Stanhope!1867 February 16, Sarah Johnson Cogswell Whittlesey, “Bertha the beauty: A story of the southern revolution”, in The Field and Fireside, page 2
    • I'll kill him for leaving you here all on your own. He should be shot with a shovel for thinking it's right to go off and leave you ...2009, Cathy Kelly, What She Wants, page 490

Questions about shot with a shovel

What does shot with a shovel mean?
Shot with a shovel means severely admonished; castigated.
What part of speech is shot with a shovel?
Shot with a shovel is an adjective.

Words near shot with a shovel in the dictionary

  1. shot tower
  2. shot towers
  3. shot trouble
  4. shot up
  5. shot welding
  6. shot with a shovel
  7. shot-blasting
  8. shot-caller
  9. shot-callers
  10. shot-clog
  11. shot-clogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shot with a shovel (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shot with a shovel.ogg.

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