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

Some of the unmanned aircraft were intercepted after crossing into Israel from Lebanon, while the others were shot down before entering the east of the country from the direction of Syria and Iraq, the IDF said. —David Brennan, ABC News, 4 Nov. 2024

In Southern California, Culver City voters narrowly defeated a similar measure in 2022, while San Francisco voters also shot down such measures in 2016 and 2020. —Meg Tanaka, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2024

State of play: Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt (R) attempted to shoot down cheating claims during a media briefing Wednesday. —Ivana Saric, Axios, 1 Nov. 2024

There is the sound of machine guns shooting down drones. —Katya Soldak, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1657, in the meaning defined at sense 1