A water pistol is a toy that squirts a jet of liquid. Fill it at the tap, and the garden becomes a battlefield.
Pressurised versions with a pump arrived in the 1990s and changed the whole scale of the thing. Water pistol is the British term and squirt gun or water gun the American. There is a serious use too, since a water pistol is the standard humane way of discouraging a cat from a worktop. The phrase also appears in complaints about weapons that look real.
1nounwater pistolA toy gun that shoots a jet of water.
“He was armed with a water pistol and nothing else.”
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Games & Toys
First appears in chapter 37 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word