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

Kyiv’s sea drones have sunk Russian warships and shot down Russian military aircraft with surface-to-air missiles. —Brad Lendon, CNN Money, 27 Nov. 2025

Eight drones were shot down over the Belgorod region, three over Kursk, and one over Crimea. —Matthew Robinson, MSNBC Newsweek, 26 Nov. 2025

The former employees said the idea had been pitched since at least 2018, but had been repeatedly shot down. —Kevin Collier, NBC news, 25 Nov. 2025

Air defenses shot down or suppressed 125 drones, the air force said, with 37 craft impacting across 15 locations. —Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 25 Nov. 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