Shooter

How to spell shooter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shooter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shooter mean?

1. nounA person who fires a gun or other weapon.
2. nounA player who attempts to score by shooting at a goal or basket.
3. nounA small measure of spirits or liqueur drunk quickly in one go.

Shooter in a sentence

• The army trained him as a skilled shooter on the rifle range.

• As the team's best shooter, she sank twelve baskets in the final.

• The bartender lined up a tequila shooter for each guest at the party.

• The club logged a result for every shooter at the archery range.

• The coach drilled the young shooter on accuracy from the free-throw line.

• He ordered a layered shooter of two coloured liqueurs.

Where does shooter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built on the native English verb 'shoot', which descends from Old English 'sceotan', meaning 'to shoot, hurl, or dart forward'. That verb belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close relatives in Dutch 'schieten' and German 'schiessen', all carrying the core idea of something flying swiftly through the air. The agent suffix '-er', also of Germanic stock, was attached to mean 'one who shoots', and 'shooter' has been used since the late Middle Ages for a person who fires a weapon or looses an arrow. Over time the sense widened to cover sports players who shoot at a goal or basket, small measures of spirits tossed back quickly, and a whole genre of video game. The spelling trap is the double 'o' carried straight over from 'shoot', plus remembering it is just one 't' before the '-er'.

How the word is built

• shoot (from Old English sceotan: to shoot, propel)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)