shotgun

Syllables: shot·gunUK/ˈʃɒtɡʌn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈʃɔtɡɐ̞n/

shotgun noun: a gun which fires loads typically consisting of small metal balls, called shot, from a cartridge.

Noun

shotgun (countable and uncountable, plural shotguns)

A gun which fires loads typically consisting of small metal balls, called shot, from a cartridge.
- The farmer's son brought home a Thanksgiving turkey from the wild that he killed with his shotgun.
- You can't talk to a man / With a shotgun in his hand1971, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, “Smackwater Jack”, in Tapestry, Ode Records
Synonyms:

scattergun
(slang) The front passenger seat in a vehicle, next to the driver; so called because the position of the shotgun-armed guard on a horse-drawn stage-coach, wagon train, or gold transport was next to the driver on a forward-mounted bench seat. Can also be used in situations of claiming other resources such as bedrooms.
- I call shotgun!
- I call shotgun!
Synonyms:

death seat
(Southern US, US, especially) A one-story dwelling with no hallways or corridors, with the rooms arranged in a straight line.
- Elvis Presley was born in a two-bedroom shotgun in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Synonyms:

shotgun house, shotgun shack
An offensive formation in which the quarterback receives the snap at a distance behind the center, often with a running back set to one or both sides of him.
(attributive) Relating to shotguns, either in a present or past sense.
- shotgun cartridges
- shotgun seat
(attributive) Relating to the threat of force or dubious means.
- shotgun wedding
- shotgun diplomacy
(attributive) Relating to the use of numerous, diverse or indiscriminate means to achieve a particular result.
- shotgun marketing
- shotgun approach

Verb

shotgun (third-person singular simple present shotguns, present participle shotgunning, simple past and past participle shotgunned)

(slang) To inhale from a pipe or other smoking device, followed shortly by an exhalation into someone else’s mouth.
- High as fuck, I light it up / Got pre-rolls for the whole month / She don't smoke but when I roll one / We shotgun the whole blunt2017, “Super Potent”, in Renaissance, performed by The Underachievers
(informal, transitive) To verbally lay claim to (something)
- I got a day off because I shotgunned it.
(transitive) To hit the ball directly back at the pitcher.
(US, slang) To rapidly drink a beverage from a can by making a hole in the bottom of the can, placing the hole above one's mouth, and opening the top.
(US, slang) To send out many (requests, answers to a question, etc), especially in the hope that one obtains a positive result (i.e. reveals useful information, is correct, etc), in the manner of a shotgun firing many balls of shot such that one may hit a target.
- An actual physical piece of paper shows that you're not just shotgunning out queries to every agent on the planet.2009, Writing Fiction For Dummies, →ISBN
- Science fiction writers are “shotgunning ideas” through their works, he said, and people tend to recall the pellets that hit the target.2011 December 6, John Schwartz, “Out of a Writer’s Imagination Came an Interactive World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
(slang) To employ the technique of shotgun debugging.
- Understand the problem before fixing it. About the only scenario where shotgunning is useful is if there is a shorted IC and you cannot tell which one it is.1998, Stuart Ball, Debugging Embedded Microprocessor Systems, page 71

shotgun meaning in Tamil, Tagalog, Malay and Indonesian

shotgun in Tamil

வேட்டைத்துப்பாக்கி

shotgun in Tagalog

gun: eskopeta

shotgun in Malay

gun: senapang patah

shotgun in Indonesian

gun: senapan gentel

More languagesFewer languages

shotgun in Thai: ปืนลูกซอง bpʉʉn-lûuk-sɔɔng

Examples of shotgun in a sentence

An unusual custom is followed at Llangennith, when shotguns are fired at a wedding - to scare off evil spirits from the newlyweds.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 258:
We rode our bikes to it this morning—me, two of my brothers, four other neighborhood kids who were ready to be baptized, plus my father and some other neighborhood adults riding shotgun.1993, Octavia Butler, chapter 2, in The Parable of the Sower:
It's like they are on a generic mailing list and some photographer is just shotgunning cards out into the world with no thought as to who they are actually going to.2013, Zack Arias, Photography Q&A: Real Questions, Real Answers, page 197:

All 40 example sentences with shotgun

Synonyms of shotgun

Forms of shotgun

Noun
plural	shotguns
alternative form	shot-gun
Verb
third-person singular present	shotguns
present participle	shotgunning
past participle	shotgunned
past	shotgunned

Plural of shotgun: shotguns

Origin of shotgun

From shot + gun. Front passenger seat sense comes from ride shotgun.

Phrases with shotgun

7 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about shotgun

What does shotgun mean?: Shotgun means a gun which fires loads typically consisting of small metal balls, called shot, from a cartridge.
What is shotgun in Tamil?: Shotgun in Tamil is வேட்டைத்துப்பாக்கி. See Shotgun meaning in Tamil.
How do you use shotgun in a sentence?: An unusual custom is followed at Llangennith, when shotguns are fired at a wedding - to scare off evil spirits from the newlyweds.
What part of speech is shotgun?: Shotgun can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shotgun?: Shotgun is pronounced /ˈʃɒtɡʌn/ (UK).
What is the plural of shotgun?: The plural of shotgun is shotguns.

Words near shotgun in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: shotgun (page history and authors); shotgun (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shotgun.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shotgun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shotgun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.