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

Altogether, Russia fired 656 drones and 73 missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to Ukrainian Air Force figures, which said the vast bulk of the drones and just over half of the missiles were shot down. —Helen Regan, CNN Money, 2 June 2026

Air force units shot down or neutralised 40 missiles and 602 drones, but the air force did not list the Zircons among those that were intercepted. —Valentyn Ogirenko, USA Today, 2 June 2026

The original Star Fox 64's Versus Mode featured up to four players as different members of Team Star Fox, competing by either shooting down each other or shooting down the most enemies. —Will Greenwald, PC Magazine, 2 June 2026

But just seven pitches into his start, Freddie Freeman sliced an opposite-field shot down the left-field line. —Maddie Lee, Los Angeles Times, 30 May 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