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 of shoot down

• 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

Air defense systems are costly Ukraine’s air force command said that 27 missiles and 315 drones were shot down or jammed, while five missiles and 24 drones hit 11 locations. —Kamila Hrabchuk, Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2026

The carrier collided with a merchant vessel, shot down one of its own fighter aircraft, lost another one of its fighting aircraft while trying to evade an incoming Houthi ballistic missile, and lost a third fighter jet due to an arresting cable failure as the pilot attempted to land on it. —Mike Brest, The Washington Examiner, 19 Jan. 2026

What all this boils down to is that even a laser weapon that's already shooting down hostile drones is streets away from one that's officially part of the armory. —New Atlas, 17 Jan. 2026

Now, just a day after the fatal shooting of Good, in Minneapolis, two people had been shot down the street from Valderrama’s home. —James Ross Gardner, New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2026

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