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

Five missiles and 25 drones struck in 15 regions and 80 drones were shot down, according to the air force. —Hira Humayun, CNN Money, 30 Jan. 2026

And now one of them has been shot down on the streets of Minnesota. —Barry Williams, New York Daily News, 30 Jan. 2026

Twenty-four were shot down over Russia's southwestern Krasnodar region, with 23 more shot down over the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2016. —Arkansas Online, 29 Jan. 2026

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia attacked overnight with one ballistic missile and 146 strike drones, 103 of which were shot down or destroyed using electronic warfare. —Kamila Hrabchuk, Los Angeles Times, 28 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