gun down

English

Verb

gun down (third-person singular simple present guns down, present participle gunning down, simple past and past participle gunned down)

1. (transitive) To kill by means of a firearm, especially deliberately and in a brutal manner.
   • 1968 September 6, “Spain: The Basque Rebellion”, in Time:

     When Manzanas arrived home from work, the assailant gunned him down from ambush with a volley of pistol shots and escaped across the nearby border to France.

2. (transitive, figurative) To shoot down; to put an end to.

   The CEO gunned down that idea before we could present it to the board.

3. (transitive, US, prison slang, of a male prisoner) To masturbate while making sustained eye contact with someone — typically a female prison officer — as a form of intimidation.

   Synonym: gun

   • 2004, Jens Soering, Yoga of Heart:

     In the cell diagonally across from mine, a prisoner regularly “gunned down” the nurse on her morning rounds. He deliberately masturbated so that she'd see him through the cell door window as he ejaculated.

Translations

kill by firearm

• Bulgarian: обстрелвам (bg) (obstrelvam)
• Catalan: disparar (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 槍斃／枪毙 (zh) (qiāngbì)

• Danish: skyde (da)
• Dutch: neerschieten (nl)
• Finnish: ampua (fi)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: skyte (no)

  Nynorsk: skyte, skjote

• Polish: zastrzelić (pl)
• Portuguese: balear (pt)
• Russian: застрели́ть (ru) pf (zastrelítʹ)
• Spanish: disparar (es), balear (es)
• Swedish: skjuta (sv)
• Vietnamese: bắn (vi)