shoot

UK/ʃuːt/US/ʃut/

verbB17 meanings One of the most common words in English · #280 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: shot, shooting, shoots

To shoot is to send something flying with force — a bullet, an arrow, a ball. A hunter shoots at a deer, an archer shoots at a target, a striker shoots from outside the box.

Shoot a person and you have hit them: 'he was shot in the leg' is a wound, not a near miss. Add AT and the hit is no longer promised — the police shot at the tyres. Film people shoot too: they shoot a scene, and a photo shoot swallows an afternoon. Anything moving fast can shoot — the cat shot under the sofa, prices shot up in the spring. The past tense is shot, never 'shooted', and a shoot is also the pale green stem a plant pushes out in April.

Definitions of shoot

1verbshootTo fire a gun, a bow or another weapon.B1~24%
“He taught his daughter to shoot with an air rifle.”
synonyms: fire
2verbwoundTo hit, wound or kill someone or something with a bullet.B1~24%
“The guard was shot during the robbery but survived.”
3verbkickTo kick, hit or throw a ball towards the goal or basket.B1~2%
“He should have passed instead of shooting from that angle.”
4verbphotographTo film or photograph something.B2~16%
“They shot the whole advert in one morning.”
synonyms: film
5verbmoveTo move somewhere very fast.B2~2%
“The rabbit shot across the road in front of us.”
6nounnewA new stem or growth coming out of a plant.B2~16%
“Green shoots were already coming up through the soil.”
7nounsessionA session of filming or photography.B2~16%
“The magazine shoot lasted eight hours and produced four pictures.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

shoot yourself in the foot — to damage your own cause by something you say or do.
shoot the breeze — to chat about nothing in particular.

Where it comes from

Shoot goes back to Old English scēotan, and comes down through Proto-Germanic *skeutaną from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kewd-, meaning to shoot or throw. German schießen, Dutch schieten and Swedish skjuta are the same word. That old sense of throwing is still visible when a plant shoots out a new stem.

Middle English
scheten
English, today
shoot

Built from

*(s)kewd- · Proto-Indo-European — to shoot, throw

From Middle English scheten. Middle English scheten,schoten, from Old English scēotan, from Proto-West Germanic skeutan, from Proto-Germanic skeutaną, from Proto-Indo-European (s)kéwd-e-ti, thematic present of (s)kewd- (“to shoot, throw”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

shoot in the wild

As shoots grow and age, the cells develop secondary cell walls that have a hard and tough structure.
Shoot (botany)
A shoot-out is usually used only after one or more of the other methods fail to produce a winner.
Penalty shoot-out (association football)
Organizations, promotions and gyms with origins in shoot wrestling are referred as the "U-Kei".
Shoot wrestling
The toxins must be destroyed by thorough cooking, and for this reason, fresh bamboo shoots are boiled before being used in other ways.
Bamboo shoot
An alternate penalty shoot-out competition was introduced at major tournaments in 2011.
Penalty shoot-out (field hockey)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of shoot

1verbshootTo fire a gun, a bow or another weapon.B1~24%

“He taught his daughter to shoot with an air rifle.”

synonyms: fire

2verbwoundTo hit, wound or kill someone or something with a bullet.B1~24%

“The guard was shot during the robbery but survived.”

3verbkickTo kick, hit or throw a ball towards the goal or basket.B1~2%

“He should have passed instead of shooting from that angle.”

4verbphotographTo film or photograph something.B2~16%

“They shot the whole advert in one morning.”

synonyms: film

5verbmoveTo move somewhere very fast.B2~2%

“The rabbit shot across the road in front of us.”

6nounnewA new stem or growth coming out of a plant.B2~16%

“Green shoots were already coming up through the soil.”

7nounsessionA session of filming or photography.B2~16%

“The magazine shoot lasted eight hours and produced four pictures.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.