gun for hire
Americannoun
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a person armed with a gun and paid to provide security or act as an assassin or mercenary.
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in business, an outside specialist or expert who is retained to work on a particular project and then dismissed.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
"I do think overall I can give a reasonable opinion to the court," he said, adding he was not a "gun for hire" and that appearing in this case had been "tiresome, time-consuming and unpleasant".
From BBC ● Dec. 2, 2021
In this vigorous and inventive western, Reilly plays a crooked gun for hire who’s desperate to go straight.
From Time ● Nov. 15, 2018
Answer Man is not a genealogical gun for hire.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 25, 2018
I did my own film but I’m happy to be a gun for hire.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2017
The team included Rinat Akhmetshin, an émigré to the United States who once served as a Soviet military officer and who has been called a Russian political gun for hire.
From New York Times ● Jul. 9, 2017
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.
