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hit out

verb

  1. to direct blows forcefully and vigorously
  2. to make a verbal attack (upon someone)
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Idioms and Phrases

Make a violent verbal or physical attack; also, strike aimlessly. For example, The star hit out at the press for their lukewarm reviews , or The therapist said patients often hit out in frustration . [First half of 1800s]
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Example Sentences

The following year, a green light was placed on the rival gang members who put a hit out on him.

In one day, I swore, drank, smoked, had multiple women in my bed, and put a hit out on a drug kingpin—played by Mel Gibson.

After several failed iPhone apps, he jumped into the relatively uncrowded iPad market and got a hit out his Alice adaptation.

But no amount of viral marketing can make a hit out of nothing.

Later, she contemplated suicide, first by pills, then, more dramatically, by taking a hit out on herself.

I stood it as long as I could, and then I began to hit out at 'em.

Instead of speaking out, George Foster hit out, and the voice with the lantern went down into the lee scuppers!

He did not stop to spar now, but directly he was within reach hit out with confidence.

So the little man always evaded his wife, while she always hit out, as it were, ten feet above his head.

He hit out wildly, but he got a gash across the forehead and another on the arm in a moment.

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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.

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