scattergunn.
Originally and chiefly North American.
1. A shotgun.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > hunting > shooting > shooting equipment > [noun] > shot-gun or fowling-piece
fowling-piece1596
fowling-gun1647
shotgun1828
scattergun1836
society > armed hostility > military equipment > weapon > device for discharging missiles > firearm > small-arm > [noun] > shotgun
turnabout1801
shotgun1828
scattergun1836
seven-bore1859
twelve-bore1859
twelve-gauge1859
twelve1895
pump1928
1836 H. R. Howard Hist. V. A. Stewart 140 I have a choice scatter-gun.
1891 C. Roberts Adrift in Amer. 237 A ‘double-pronged scatter gun’.
a1892 G. H. Kingsley in M. H. Kingsley Mem. v in G. H. Kingsley Notes Sport & Trav. (1900) v. 142 I take up my scattergun and wander away.
1910 Blackwood's Mag. Feb. 285/1 All round Muttra shooting with a scatter-gun is varied and good.
1923 J. H. Cook Fifty Years on Old Frontier i. 4 Pigeon shooting was good..for anyone who owned or could borrow a ‘scatter-gun’.
1932 ‘D. Yates’ Safe Custody ix. 198 We've thirteen men, and between us we've got six pistols and three scatter-guns.
1968 Punch 1 May 624/1 He hands his trunk to this Puerto Rican who's carrying..a sawn-off scatter-gun.
1973 R. D. Symons Where Wagon Led i. iv. 51 Once in a while one of us would pack a scatter gun and get a brace or two of prairie chicken.
2. figurative (attributive in quots.). Cf. scattershot n. at scatter v. Compounds 1.
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the mind > attention and judgement > judgement or decision > misjudgement > indiscriminateness > [adjective]
blinda1400
unchoosinga1586
undiscerning1589
unrespective1609
irrespecting1625
promiscuous1633
incurious1645
indistinct1650
irrespective1650
uncritical1659
indiscerning1664
undistinguishing1665
undistinguishable1702
unrefining1735
indiscriminating1754
undiscriminating1776
indiscriminate1792
unfastidious1816
rough1819
lumping1827
indistinguishing1828
unparticularizing1828
farraginous1837
imperceiverant1844
scattergun1845
undistinctive1851
indiscriminative1854
unselecting1895
scattershot1961
1845 J. J. Hooper Daddy Biggs Scrape 197 This d—n scatter-gun crowd.
1952 J. Steinbeck East of Eden ii. xiv. 150 A scattergun method for dealing with unpleasant facts.
1963 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 6 Feb. Republicans agreed..to a ‘scattergun plan’. Each representative wrote the name of his choice..on a secret ballot. There were no nominations and no debate.
1974 Publishers Weekly 4 Feb. 70/1 Farson sets it all down with a scattergun assertiveness that inevitably turns up contradictions.
1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 15 Aug. 913/1 Stuart Holland's scatter-gun polemic embodies many of the misconceptions which now threaten to dominate the Labour Party's attitude to Europe.
Derivatives
ˈscattergun v. intransitive (figurative in quot. 1968).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > judgement or decision > misjudgement > indiscriminateness > fail to discriminate [verb (intransitive)]
to know no faces1569
misdistinguish1593
to lump (something) into or(in) with1796
scattergun1968
1968 R. M. Nixon in W. Safire Before the Fall (1975) i. vi. 72 If we scatter-gun too much we are not going to have an impact.
ˈscattergunner n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > hunting > shooting > shooter > [noun] > other types of shooter
Peter Gunner1615
pot-hunter1750
rifleman1809
snapshot1845
market-shooter1880
holder-on1881
potter1884
snap-shooter1887
kangaroo-shooter1902
plinker1943
rough-shooter1958
scattergunner1969
1969 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 8 Nov. 20/1 Two traps will be in operation and all scattergunners are invited to compete.
1980 Outdoor Life (U.S.) Oct. (Northeast ed.) 104/2 Scatter-gunners bag approximately 50 million of them each hunting season.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1910; most recently modified version published online June 2021).
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n.1836