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Glite Dictionary
🏆 To try hard 🎯 To target
to gun for

to gun for

10 7.9
To try to make someone look bad or get them into trouble
  • phrasal verb
  • /ɡʌn fɔr/
  • Offensive
translation icon : buscar perjudicar a
  • Bob has been gunning for you ever since he joined the team, looking for a chance to criticize your work.
  • gunning for the guy
  • went gunning for
  • now gunning for

I wasn't gunning for her to remove it from the bill, but I was just like, it wasn't good.

Examples

  • I think someone's gunning for you.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Anyone gunning for Google and their near monopoly over internet advertising?

    Blog text (27)

  • - Now he'll be gunning for us.

    Love Me Tender (1956)

  • Too many people are gunning for hm.

    The Tall Target (1951)

  • - They're gunning for you.

    'G' Men (1935)

  • I think that Tierney just ran an effective campaign, despite the fact that the GOP and the media were gunning for him.

    Blog text (6)

  • So now they're gunning for you, Vance.

    Love Me Tender (1956)

  • I don't know why somebody's gunning for my job, but, look... let's remain a team, okay?

    Elf (2003)

  • I got beat down pretty badly in school and had to realize that it wasn't actually the natural order of things to have people gunning for me constantly.

    Blog text (24)

  • Big Money has been gunning for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for decades—since the beginning of Social Security in 1935.

    Blog text (10)

Synonyms

to level
vsto gun for
53 5.4

To direct strong criticism or blame at someone

deliberately try to harm or punish someone by targeting them

Antonyms

to support
∞ 1.0

Give help to a person or idea

to defend
∞ 1.3

To protect people and things from attack or harm

How Hostile

to gun for
  • Offensive
10 7.9
to criticize
701 3.3

Surface Forms

gun for infinitive
gunned for past
gunned for past participle
gunning for present participle
guns for third person singular

Morphology

gun + for

There is a partial, metaphorical connection: 'gun' evokes aiming/targeting and 'for' marks the objective, so a learner could infer a sense like 'aim for' or 'go after' a goal. However, the specific nuance 'try very hard to achieve or win' and the colloquial verb usage require metaphorical extension and are not fully predictable from the literal constituents, making it only partially transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Gun for may come from the image of someone pointing a gun at a person to make them the target, with for showing who is chosen. So if someone is gunning for you, they are 'trying to harm, defeat, or get you into trouble' by aiming criticism or punishment at you.