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shootout

UK/ˈʃuːtaʊt/US/ˈʃuːtaʊt/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,188 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: shootouts

A shootout is a decisive exchange of fire, or a penalty tie-breaker. A penalty shootout.

The football sense is now the commoner in Britain and settles a match that ends level. A shootout in football is decided by nerve as much as by skill, which is why it is so hard to practise.

Volusia County Sheriff's Department · Public domain

Definitions of shootout

  1. 1nounshootoutA decisive exchange of fire between armed opponents, such as police and cornered robbers, and also the penalty tie-breaker that settles a drawn football match.B2+

    “The whole tournament came down to one shootout.”

shootout is a contest.

Where it comes from

Deverbal from shoot out.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

shootout in the wild

  • Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles.

    Symbionese Liberation Army

  • If scores are level after five pairs of shots, the shootout progresses into additional "sudden-death" rounds.

    Penalty shoot-out (association football)

  • The main methods of determining a winner in a tied game are the overtime period (commonly referred to as overtime), the shootout, or a combination of both.

    Overtime (ice hockey)

  • The shootout ended when the FBI agents killed both Platt and Matix as they were attempting to flee the scene.

    1986 FBI Miami shootout

  • The scale of the shootout led to the adoption by the FBI and many local police departments of more effective handguns; they primarily switched from revolvers to semi-automatics.

    1986 FBI Miami shootout

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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.