Other forms: shooters
A shooter is somebody who fires a weapon. The shooter was arrested, a lone shooter, a clay pigeon shooter.
In news reporting it is the neutral term for a person who has fired a gun at people, and it deliberately avoids saying anything about motive. In sport it is the competitor: a target shooter, a good shooter in basketball. In video games, a shooter is a whole genre — a first-person shooter — where the word names the game rather than the player. Note shoot, shooting, and sharpshooter, meaning an expert marksman.
1nounshooterSomebody who fires a weapon.
“The shooter was stopped about a mile from the scene.”
2nounvideoA video game genre based on firing weapons.
“It is a first-person shooter with a very good story.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
shooter is somebody who fires.
Old English sceotere is simply shoot plus -er and has existed as long as the verb. The genre and the news senses are twentieth-century, built on a word that has been in the language for over a thousand years.
Old English
sċēotere — shooter
Middle English
schoter
English, today
shooter
From Middle English schoter, schuter, schotter, scheter, schetare, scheotere, from Old English sċēotere (“shooter”), equivalent to shoot + -er. Compare Dutch schieter, schutter (“shooter”), German Schießer (“shooter”), Swedish skjutare, West Frisian sjitter (“shooter”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA