"shoot the shit" meaning in English

See shoot the shit in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-shoot the shit.ogg [Australia] Forms: shoots the shit [present, singular, third-person], shooting the shit [participle, present], shot the shit [participle, past], shot the shit [past]
Etymology: Shoot the shit is a variation of shoot the breeze. Both of these expressions mean “to chat idly just to pass the time.” A form of shoot the breeze is recorded in a poem written during World War I by a US private, who described his corporals as sociable men who were much better at “breeze-shooting” than fighting or doing actual work. It doesn’t require much skill or effort to hit the wind with a gun, so the expression goes. Shoot the shit emerges in the 1940s, notably found in a letter by the author Norman Mailer. The shit, here, may be a more intensive and alliterative substitute for breeze, with shit meaning “stuff,” i.e., any old topic. Ever the shit-talker, the character Holden Caulfield used a milder take on the expression, shoot the crap, in J.D. Salinger’s 1951 The Catcher in the Rye. Head templates: {{en-verb|shoot<,,shot> the shit}} shoot the shit (third-person singular simple present shoots the shit, present participle shooting the shit, simple past and past participle shot the shit)
  1. (slang, vulgar) To chat casually; to gossip. Tags: slang, vulgar Synonyms: shoot the breeze, chew the fat

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for shoot the shit meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Shoot the shit is a variation of shoot the breeze. Both of these expressions mean “to chat idly just to pass the time.” A form of shoot the breeze is recorded in a poem written during World War I by a US private, who described his corporals as sociable men who were much better at “breeze-shooting” than fighting or doing actual work. It doesn’t require much skill or effort to hit the wind with a gun, so the expression goes.\nShoot the shit emerges in the 1940s, notably found in a letter by the author Norman Mailer. The shit, here, may be a more intensive and alliterative substitute for breeze, with shit meaning “stuff,” i.e., any old topic. Ever the shit-talker, the character Holden Caulfield used a milder take on the expression, shoot the crap, in J.D. Salinger’s 1951 The Catcher in the Rye.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shoots the shit",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shooting the shit",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot the shit",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot the shit",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "shoot<,,shot> the shit"
      },
      "expansion": "shoot the shit (third-person singular simple present shoots the shit, present participle shooting the shit, simple past and past participle shot the shit)",
      "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"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English predicates",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We didn't do much besides stand around and shoot the shit, but it was fun to see him again.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To chat casually; to gossip."
      ],
      "id": "en-shoot_the_shit-en-verb-ikuLIGyc",
      "links": [
        [
          "chat",
          "chat"
        ],
        [
          "casually",
          "casually"
        ],
        [
          "gossip",
          "gossip"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang, vulgar) To chat casually; to gossip."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "shoot the breeze"
        },
        {
          "word": "chew the fat"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang",
        "vulgar"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-shoot the shit.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/16/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shoot the shit"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Shoot the shit is a variation of shoot the breeze. Both of these expressions mean “to chat idly just to pass the time.” A form of shoot the breeze is recorded in a poem written during World War I by a US private, who described his corporals as sociable men who were much better at “breeze-shooting” than fighting or doing actual work. It doesn’t require much skill or effort to hit the wind with a gun, so the expression goes.\nShoot the shit emerges in the 1940s, notably found in a letter by the author Norman Mailer. The shit, here, may be a more intensive and alliterative substitute for breeze, with shit meaning “stuff,” i.e., any old topic. Ever the shit-talker, the character Holden Caulfield used a milder take on the expression, shoot the crap, in J.D. Salinger’s 1951 The Catcher in the Rye.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shoots the shit",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shooting the shit",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot the shit",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shot the shit",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "shoot<,,shot> the shit"
      },
      "expansion": "shoot the shit (third-person singular simple present shoots the shit, present participle shooting the shit, simple past and past participle shot the shit)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English predicates",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "English vulgarities"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We didn't do much besides stand around and shoot the shit, but it was fun to see him again.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To chat casually; to gossip."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "chat",
          "chat"
        ],
        [
          "casually",
          "casually"
        ],
        [
          "gossip",
          "gossip"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang, vulgar) To chat casually; to gossip."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang",
        "vulgar"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-shoot the shit.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/16/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/En-au-shoot_the_shit.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "shoot the breeze"
    },
    {
      "word": "chew the fat"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shoot the shit"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). 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.