gun for
Britishverb
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to search for in order to reprimand, punish, or kill
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to try earnestly for
he was gunning for promotion
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Pursue relentlessly so as to overcome or destroy. For example, He was sure they were gunning for him and asked for police protection , or The senator felt that the reporters were gunning for him with that article about his brother . [ Slang ; late 1800s]
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Go after in earnest, try hard to obtain. For example, He's been gunning for a raise all year . [ Slang ; mid-1900s]
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.
That equates to one gun for every seven Australians, the report says.
From BBC
OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 was the starting gun for the artificial-intelligence arms race that has lifted up the stock market and unleashed billions of dollars of investment.
From MarketWatch
The staging of the former’s broomstick flights is “Top Gun” for tween girls, and her castle in the sky is a strangely scary redoubt somewhere between Tim Burton and a German Expressionist film.
“The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 acted as the starting gun for the current AI race,” Austin Pickle, investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said in a note Monday.
From MarketWatch
They had to train with a gun, for example, and, more important, let go of the need for punch line.
From Los Angeles Times
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.
