bullet
Americannoun
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bullets
plural
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a small metal projectile, part of a cartridge, for firing from small arms.
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a cartridge.
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a small ball.
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Printing. a heavy dot for marking paragraphs or otherwise calling attention to or itemizing particular sections of text, especially in display advertising.
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Cards. an ace.
verb (used without object)
idioms
noun
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a small metallic missile enclosed in a cartridge, used as the projectile of a gun, rifle, etc
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the entire cartridge
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something resembling a bullet, esp in shape or effect
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stock exchange a fixed interest security with a single maturity date
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commerce a security that offers a fixed interest and matures on a fixed date
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commerce
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the final repayment of a loan that repays the whole of the sum borrowed, as interim payments have been for interest only
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( as modifier )
a bullet loan
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slang dismissal, sometimes without notice (esp in the phrases get or give the bullet )
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printing See centred dot
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See bite
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bullet
1550–60; < Middle French boullette, equivalent to boulle ball ( see bowl 2) + -ette -ette
Explanation
A bullet is the metal object that is fired out of a gun when its trigger is pulled. Without bullets, a gun is harmless. If someone talks about ammunition for a gun, they're talking about bullets. A bullet doesn't usually contain explosives but does its damage by penetrating whatever — or whomever — it hits. The Middle French source of bullet is boulette, "cannonball" or "small ball," from boule, "a ball," with its Latin root bulla, "round thing." To "bite the bullet" means to withstand an unpleasant but necessary situation, from the (possibly fictitious) practice of patients biting bullets during painful operations.
Vocabulary lists containing bullet
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Belgal remains in isolation at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn with a bullet still lodged in his neck, according to his lawyers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
"AI will never be a silver bullet," she said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
Panorama's team examined what appeared to be bullet holes from the raid, still visible, which were clustered together on the walls low to the ground.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
The bullet points included starting with strong, committed ownership; delivering a good product; establishing credibility and trust with fans and media; and hiring good people and letting them do their jobs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2026
Basing his hypothesis on newspaper reports of Garfield's symptoms, Dr. Frank Baker drew a diagram two days after the shooting to show where he thought the bullet penetrated.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
Albanian law allows the police to use rubber bullets during protests only in extreme cases.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2026
“Since that really big winter in 1983, we’ve had several occasions of pretty active winter storms, but we’ve sort of dodged bullets because those storms, in general, didn’t fall upon the highest tides,” Cayan said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026
It has led to a tony version of an old western shoot-out, with opinion pieces in Aspen’s two local newspapers replacing revolver bullets and $8 matcha lattes at Sant Ambroeus swapped for 10-cent beers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
Known as magnetofossils, the microscopic structures come in shapes resembling spearheads, spindles, bullets, and needles.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 2, 2026
The bullets went in a thing called the cylinder, which looked a lot like a fat metal honeycomb that popped out from the side of the gun.
From "As Brave As You" by Jason Reynolds
For a follow-up about “top family-friendly hikes,” Siri delivered a clean, bulleted list, citing several web sources.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
He has used his office window, which overlooks the 101 Freeway, as a whiteboard of sorts, with a list of five bulleted words written in black marker on the glass: Empower.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2023
He noticed that he had most of the symptoms on the bulleted list.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 16, 2023
Next quarter Gannett will roll out a live pilot program using AI to identify the most important points of an article and create bulleted summaries at the top of it.
From Reuters ● Jun. 16, 2023
He hurtled himself into the air, bulleted down the river valley, made a two-circle loop, climbed, and sped back to the bridge.
From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Wright — out of necessity, or sanity-preservation — moves chronologically, bulleting each of their 25 albums and chasing Sparks' hope for fortune and adoration across their many troughs and peaks.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2021
With one snap of her head, she redirects all the momentum from the cross, bulleting the ball into the near corner.
From Slate ● Jun. 19, 2019
“Society to working moms:” she wrote in the April 18 post before bulleting a list of the unreasonable expectations the modern mother faces.
From Fox News ● Apr. 27, 2019
In the distance, a monstrous wheel of metal with a thousand sharp, jagged teeth spun wildly, tearing at the coal, sending shards of black rock bulleting through the air.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2015
He’s bulleting to the front door and I catch up with him.
From "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
