1
as in ridicules
to make (someone or something) the object of unkind laughter
nowadays the aging activist is routinely shot down in most quarters of the media and dismissed as an irrelevant crank
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in kills
to reject by or as if by a vote
every one of my fund-raising ideas was shot down by the other club members
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in refutes
to prove to be false
the results of several studies shoot down the hypothesis that coffee causes heart attacks
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of shoots down
And in the comments of her introductory video, her team shoots down every plausible guess.
—
Lisa Respers France, CNN Money, 16 Oct. 2025
The powerful big tech lobby shoots down any law remotely alludes to testing and regulating AI machines.
—The Ai Insider, Interesting Engineering, 26 Aug. 2025
Lisa Respers France, CNN Money, 16 Oct. 2025
The powerful big tech lobby shoots down any law remotely alludes to testing and regulating AI machines.
—The Ai Insider, Interesting Engineering, 26 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shoots down
Verb
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Then there’s the loud kind, where the audience openly ridicules you.—
Adrienne LaFrance,
The Atlantic,
15 Sep. 2025
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Wednesday ridicules Pugsley for making a zombie.—
Jessica M. Goldstein,
Vulture,
3 Sep. 2025
Verb
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In Ringu, Sadako psychically kills a journalist who mocks her mother’s psychic abilities.—
Will Borger,
Rolling Stone,
31 Oct. 2025
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Indeed, The Ring (2002) is the film’s jumping-off point, with a plot revolving around a cursed videotape that kills all who watch it.—
Declan Gallagher,
Entertainment Weekly,
31 Oct. 2025
Verb
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And refutes this idea that dinosaurs were in decline before the asteroid struck.—
Ari Daniel,
NPR,
30 Oct. 2025
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Like Dunbar’s speakers, Hughes’s dispossessed have no way out, and the poem implicitly refutes optimism regarding the Great Migration and racial progress.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
20 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Proposition 50 mocks California voters and wastes hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.—
Kaitlyn Schallhorn,
Oc Register,
21 Oct. 2025
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So, tonight, this song goes out to a white man who watches [pornography series] Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast.—
Shania Russell,
Entertainment Weekly,
20 Oct. 2025
Verb
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The anti-American side focuses exclusively on the tragedies, usually makes slavery the chief argument for the prosecution, and dismisses the triumphs as hypocritical rhetoric.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
28 Oct. 2025
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Some critics have interpreted the ending as a glib last-minute twist that threatens to neutralize the story’s potency and dismisses the seriousness of the movie’s premise.—
Shirley Li,
The Atlantic,
22 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Many Democrats have adopted a more brash and confrontational style of politics, which refuses to keep anything quiet.—
Jeremy Lott,
The Washington Examiner,
31 Oct. 2025
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Paul Thomas Anderson fits a generation’s worth of cineplex joys into One Battle After Another, but the revolution refuses to get off the couch.—
Jonathan Lethem,
The New York Review of Books,
30 Oct. 2025
Verb
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If Duggan vetoes the ordinance, the council would have a week from the receipt of the veto to override it with a two-thirds majority vote — meaning at least six of the nine council members.—
Dana Afana,
Freep.com,
22 Oct. 2025
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Yet an administrator vetoes the plan, and the meeting’s start is uncaffeinated.—
Joshua Rothman,
New Yorker,
9 Sep. 2025
Verb
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In between questions about Nineties cultural touchstones like Friends, Space Jam, Beavis and Butthead, the Spice Girls, and Sir-Mix-A-Lot — during which Kravitz racks up a lot of points and Butler downs a lot of shots — the pair also discusses working on Caught Stealing.—
Jon Blistein,
Rolling Stone,
20 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Shoots down.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shoots%20down. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.
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