First recorded in 1865–70
First recorded in 1880–85
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Olsen: But I have to ask, what is your interpretation of the floating machine gun?
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026
The Vahid Online Telegram channel shared two photographs of a black pickup truck with a machine gun mounted in the back in Tehran's Sadeghiyeh Square on the night of 8 January.
From BBC ● Feb. 9, 2026
He was Sylvester Stallone in the 1986 action movie “Cobra,” toting a machine gun.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026
The Taiwanese boats also have water cannon and a 20-millimetre static machine gun, but are careful to avoid a confrontation that "could lead to unimaginable consequences", Huang said.
From Barron's ● Nov. 11, 2025
Moch pounded on the ironwood as hard and as fast as he could, the snap-snap- snap of it firing almost like a machine gun in the stern of the boat.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
It’s hard to get exact numbers on the revenue that has produced, but with numbers like that, Atlas has likely made millions off this machine-gun approach.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2025
Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2024
Robert D. Booker, an infantryman with the 34th Infantry Division who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroic actions while under machine-gun fire in Tunisia in 1943.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 12, 2023
Australian special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith was lauded as a hero and awarded Australia's highest military honour for "conspicuous gallantry" during a 2010 attack on two Taliban machine-gun posts during his fifth tour of Afghanistan.
From Reuters ● May 30, 2023
Eighty miles away from Dunston—four seconds in Earth time—the first bullet-gray, thumb-size drops of rain plunked down all over the blacktop and Cade’s truck, pelting us with a staccato machine-gun peppering—thak! thak! thak!
From "100 Sideways Miles" by Andrew Smith
His battalion's attack on the German trench had started well according to Stephen Erskin, curator of the Green Howard's Museum in Richmond, with more than 140 prisoners and two machine-guns captured.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2016
Kobani's defenders, outgunned by the militants, are hoping the arrival of peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan with badly-needed weapons including cannon and truck-mounted machine-guns will help them turn the tide.
From Reuters ● Oct. 31, 2014
If you have no heavy weaponry and face an enemy who has machine-guns, there are only three things you can do.
From Salon ● Jan. 11, 2014
Ash is equipped with a jet-pack which is also a drill, as well as an arsenal of over-the-top machine-guns, rockets, lasers which steadily grows as the game progresses.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 4, 2012
The final act was the rushing of the German position, the nucleus of which was a small detached farm-house in which were several machine-guns.
From The First Seven Divisions Being a Detailed Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres by Hamilton, Ernest W.
He scored twice at Newcastle, both close-range headers, the second of which involved hurling himself through the chest of a Newcastle defender like an action-movie stuntman being machine-gunned through a plate glass window.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 17, 2020
The orchestra does not stint on traditional fare: amid the splattering melons and machine-gunned music paper, it offered potent performances of Mahler’s Fifth and Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 6, 2018
Serena, in her final match, machine-gunned her onetime rival Sharapova off the court so brusquely and efficiently, it looked as if she had an urgent appointment somewhere that she couldn’t miss.
From New York Times ● Aug. 23, 2012
A decade ago, two of the most distinctive voices in TV belonged to writer-producers whose characters machine-gunned crisp dialogue at a blinding words-per-minute rate.
From Time ● Jun. 11, 2012
The Germans had not sniped or machine-gunned the stretcher-bearers, but had sent their own men out on the same mission too.
From From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Gibbs, Philip
Talk about using it as ammo, I’m machine-gunning love.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2021
They put three past Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and Joe Allen’s late equaliser against Arsenal on Wednesday had Klopp machine-gunning his fists in celebration.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 15, 2016
When he pauses mid-strut to perform his signature move of machine-gunning the crowd with his 1962 guitar, he brings the house down.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 7, 2013
The third was a 19-year-old girl named Djamila Bouazza who had spent three years in a mental hospital, answered most questions by machine-gunning the court with her finger and crying: "Tac-tac-tac."
From Time Magazine Archive
Instead of machine-gunning them, he brought his heel down hard on the ping-pong ball that came rolling toward him off the paddle of one of the two officers playing.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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.
