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

• deride
• gibe
• jibe
• jeer
• laugh (at)
• mock
• ridicule
• scout
• skewer

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

Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defenses shot down 110 Ukrainian drones overnight. —Bradford Betz, FOXNews.com, 26 May 2025

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that overnight into Saturday its forces shot down more than 100 Ukrainian drones over six provinces in western and southern Russia. —Illia Novikov, Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2025

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that overnight and early on Saturday, its forces shot down over 100 Ukrainian drones over six provinces in western and southern Russia. —Illia Novikov, Chicago Tribune, 24 May 2025

The whole idea of a system of space lasers shooting down nuclear missiles lobbed at us is, in addition to being prohibitively expensive, unworkable from a physics perspective. —Carlo Versano, MSNBC Newsweek, 22 May 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