Learn how to use the verb "Shoot"
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| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. |
| My name is Alisha, and in this episode, we're going to talk about the verb "shoot." |
| Let's begin! |
| Let's talk about the basic definition of the verb shoot. |
| The basic definition is "to release something held under tension or to launch something by explosion, by gas, or by air." |
| Examples: |
| "You shot me with a rubber band!" |
| "They shot a rocket into the sky." |
| Let's look at the conjugations for this verb. |
| Present: shoot, shoots |
| Past: shot |
| Past participle: shot |
| Progressive: shooting |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is "to wound or to kill someone or to destroy something." |
| Examples: |
| "The man was shot in the arm." |
| "The thief shot out all the security cameras." |
| So, in the first one, "the man was shot in the arm" refers to being wounded in the arm. In these cases too, when a person is shot in a specific body part, it's usually referring to a gun, being shot with a gun in somewhere, in some location. |
| In the second example sentence, we see "the thief shot out." Actually, "shot out" is kind of used for, like light bulbs or other like machines, maybe TV screens or computer screens, for example, something with a light. Sort of like how we turn out the light, we can shoot out a light as well. So, "to shoot out a light" means to fire a gun and cause the light to go out, actually. So, to shoot out a light is like to damage the light as well. So, turning it off and damaging it or destroying it by shooting it. |
| The second additional meaning is "to cause to move forward quickly or to send something quickly." |
| Examples: |
| "Shoot me an email later!" |
| "Did you see that? A shooting star!" |
| First one, "shoot me an email later" means just send a quick email to me later. It's like just a quick kind of short image there, "shoot me an email." |
| In the second example sentence, "Look, a shooting star!" It's a star that's moving quickly across the sky. So, it's shooting, so shooting refers to very quick motion like this. |
| The third additional meaning is "to take a place quickly." |
| This is a designated place like a specific place or a specific position that is quickly assumed, quickly taken. |
| Examples: |
| "He shot into his place in line." |
| "She shot straight up in her chair." |
| Okay, so in the first example sentence, "he shot into his place in line," means there are many different places in line. One place is designated as his space. He quickly moves to that place in line. We can say, he shot quickly to his place in line. |
| In the second example sentence, "she shot straight up in her chair," it means her posture improved to the correct position in her chair, so, and she did it very quickly. So, this pose, this kind of pose, I guess. She shot straight up in her chair, but we use "shot" to refer to a quick motion. We could say, she sat straight up, but to use she shot straight up shows that it was a very fast motion. |
| The fourth additional meaning is "to take a picture or to take video" as we are doing right now. |
| Examples: |
| "We're shooting the "shoot" episode of Know Your Verbs right now." |
| The video team shoots a lot of stuff every week!" |
| Okay, so this refers to using a camera to take pictures or take video. We say "shoot" to refer to taking the video or taking the picture. So we use "shoot" to refer to recording images, recording video with a camera. So, we talk about "shoots" actually a lot in this office, like we have a shoot schedule. We use it as a noun, but right now, we could say in the verb form, we're shooting a new episode. So, "shoot" refers to recording images and videos. |
| Let's move on to some variations for this verb. |
| The first variation is "to shoot down." |
| "To shoot down" actually has two different meanings. Let's talk about the first one. The first meaning of "to shoot down" is "to reject," to reject. |
| Examples: |
| "He shot me down when I asked him out for dinner." |
| "My proposal is going to get shot down." |
| So this means "reject." So, in the first example, "he shot me down when I asked him out for dinner" means he rejected me when I asked him out for dinner. He said no! |
| In the second example sentence, it's a prediction. My proposal is going to get shot down. My proposal is going to get rejected. Someone is going to say no to my proposal. |
| The second meaning of "to shoot down" however, refers to using a gun or some other kind of weaponry to cause like a flying object to go out of the air and to fall to the ground. It can also mean to kill a person, usually, from like a standing position and then they drop because they have been shot. |
| Examples: |
| "The victim was shot down in the street." |
| "The enemy is shooting down planes." |
| So in both of these example sentences, there's like a fall that happens. So, in the first example sentence, someone was shot down in the street, there's a person standing and then they are shot. As a result of that shot, they go down. So we use the expression "shot down" in past tense. |
| In the second example sentence, we see it in the progressive tense, "the enemy is shooting down planes" referred to an ongoing situation where the enemy is attacking planes and causing them to fall from the air. |
| The second variation is "to shoot (oneself) in the foot." |
| This means to cause misfortune to yourself. |
| So, examples: |
| "We shot ourselves in the foot when we partnered with that new company. They're terrible." |
| "I shot myself in the foot when I canceled my contract; there was a big fee." |
| So both of these refer to making a decision that turned into some kind of misfortune. In the first example sentence, it's a partnership with a new company, but the new company is terrible, so we say, "I shot myself in the foot or we shot ourselves in the foot," meaning, we caused misfortune with our decision. So, it was our own decision that caused that bad situation, we can say, "I shot myself in the foot" to explain that. |
| In the second example sentence, it's a personal situation, "I canceled my contract, but I shot myself in the foot because there's a big fee for canceling my contract." So it caused some kind of misfortunes and negative situation. |
| The last variation is really not so difficult. "We use the word shoot as well when we make a mistake." |
| We could say: |
| "Oh, shoot!" |
| It's kind of like the light version of a more serious curse word or swear word. So when you make a mistake with something, if you hurt yourself, if you, I don't know, don't do something you were supposed to do, whatever, you could say: |
| "Shoot!" |
| "Oh, shoot!" |
| "Uh, shoot!" |
| To express that feeling of disappointment or maybe anger or surprise as well. "Shoot" is commonly used this way. |
| We also use "shoot" when we're talking in like a discussion and someone wants to share an idea or has some kind of new information to give us. So, it's kind of like a friendly command to speak. So one person might say, "I have an idea for you." The other person could say, "shoot" meaning go, speak, so it's quite friendly, "shoot." |
| So, there are a few other different ways that you can use the word "shoot," but anyway, I hope you found a new way, somehow, to use the word "shoot" from this video. Of course, if you have any questions, comments or would like to try to make an example sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
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