"shoot one's bolt" meaning in English

See shoot one's bolt in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-shoot one's bolt.ogg [Australia] Forms: shoots one's bolt [present, singular, third-person], shooting one's bolt [participle, present], shot one's bolt [participle, past], shot one's bolt [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|shoot<,,shot> one's bolt}} shoot one's bolt (third-person singular simple present shoots one's bolt, present participle shooting one's bolt, simple past and past participle shot one's bolt)
  1. (idiomatic) To use up one's resources, especially a singular one or one not readily restored. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: blow one's load [figuratively], shoot one's load [figuratively], shoot one's wad [figuratively]
    Sense id: en-shoot_one's_bolt-en-verb-Evr4HOSU Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for shoot one's bolt meaning in English (2.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shoots one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shooting one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "shoot<,,shot> one's bolt"
      },
      "expansion": "shoot one's bolt (third-person singular simple present shoots one's bolt, present participle shooting one's bolt, simple past and past participle shot one's bolt)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We were playing checkers and, although I'd started off well, I seemed to have shot my bolt too soon."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, Kim Philby, My Silent War, page 34",
          "text": "The war situation was going from bad to worse. The Greek army, facing the Italians in Albania, had shot its bolt by spring. The Yugoslav revolution of April, for which SOE claimed some credit (our people had been there and post hoc, propter hoc), was followed by the prompt invasion of Yugoslavia and occupation of Greece.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To use up one's resources, especially a singular one or one not readily restored."
      ],
      "id": "en-shoot_one's_bolt-en-verb-Evr4HOSU",
      "links": [
        [
          "use up",
          "use up"
        ],
        [
          "resource",
          "resource"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To use up one's resources, especially a singular one or one not readily restored."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "figuratively"
          ],
          "word": "blow one's load"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "figuratively"
          ],
          "word": "shoot one's load"
        },
        {
          "tags": [
            "figuratively"
          ],
          "word": "shoot one's wad"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-shoot one's bolt.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shoot one's bolt"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shoots one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shooting one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot one's bolt",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "shoot<,,shot> one's bolt"
      },
      "expansion": "shoot one's bolt (third-person singular simple present shoots one's bolt, present participle shooting one's bolt, simple past and past participle shot one's bolt)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We were playing checkers and, although I'd started off well, I seemed to have shot my bolt too soon."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, Kim Philby, My Silent War, page 34",
          "text": "The war situation was going from bad to worse. The Greek army, facing the Italians in Albania, had shot its bolt by spring. The Yugoslav revolution of April, for which SOE claimed some credit (our people had been there and post hoc, propter hoc), was followed by the prompt invasion of Yugoslavia and occupation of Greece.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To use up one's resources, especially a singular one or one not readily restored."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "use up",
          "use up"
        ],
        [
          "resource",
          "resource"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To use up one's resources, especially a singular one or one not readily restored."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-shoot one's bolt.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-shoot_one%27s_bolt.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "blow one's load"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "shoot one's load"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "shoot one's wad"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shoot one's bolt"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.