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:
"So it just rushed down like a bullet train."
From Barron's ● Sep. 4, 2026
Months before, a bullet had ended the life of his beloved Pebbles, who left behind a nest with eggs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
They also say a bullet train, and all the construction, would disrupt their peaceful downtown.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
But local government experts say it is not the "silver bullet" to save a system from "the brink of collapse".
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
It slams into the dirt on my right with the force of a slimy bullet.
From "Fast Pitch" by Nic Stone
A few minutes later he added, “He probably gave me the good genes to survive lol … Guided the bullets or something.”
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2026
He even devises a way to keep the goats corralled so that he doesn’t have to chase them down or use up his precious bullets and gunpowder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Engineers said they were able to debunk some "myths", including that bullets can ricochet off the curve in the ballistic plate.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
The drones do not shoot bullets or any other kind of projectile.
From Barron's ● May 15, 2026
Every evening before he began to tell stories, Pa made the bullets for his next day’s hunting.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
But if AI can turn a 16,000-email disaster area into simple bulleted lists, I might finally make peace with my thousands of unreads.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 18, 2026
Less than two minutes later, Mendoza hit a leaping Charlie Becker on a perfectly bulleted pass to the end zone for a 21-yard touchdown and an eventual 10-0 lead.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2026
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
Frightful bulleted into the sky and opened her wings.
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
Definitions 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.
