shoot down

verb

shot down; shooting down; shoots down

transitive verb

1

: to cause to fall by shooting

shot down the helicopter

especially : to kill in this way

was shot down in cold blood

2

: to put an end to : defeat, reject

shoot down legislation

3

: deflate, ridicule

4

: discredit sense 2

shoot down a theory

Synonyms

• ridicule
• mock
• laugh (at)
• rag on

Examples of shoot down in a Sentence

nowadays the aging activist is routinely shot down in most quarters of the media and dismissed as an irrelevant crank

every one of my fund-raising ideas was shot down by the other club members

Recent Examples on the Web

Jansen Funding vote fails for the 10th time The Senate once again shot down a measure to reopen the government Thursday. —Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA Today, 16 Oct. 2025

And in the comments of her introductory video, her team shoots down every plausible guess. —Lisa Respers France, CNN Money, 16 Oct. 2025

Unfortunately for him, Judge Arun Subramanian shot down the request as the Bureau of Prisons will accommodate general locations for sentences, but not specific prisons. —Armon Sadler, VIBE.com, 15 Oct. 2025

However, when Horowitz suggested the idea of Fishburne potentially joining the Star Wars universe, the actor shot down the idea faster than Han Solo shot Greedo. —Emlyn Travis, Entertainment Weekly, 14 Oct. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1657, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for shoot down

• adown
• blowdown
• breakdown
• countdown
• crackdown
• crosstown
• downtown
• drawdown
• dropdown
• facedown
• godown
• hometown