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Glite Dictionary
🎯 Target practice place 💉 Drug use place
shooting gallery

shooting gallery

1 6.9
A place where people practice shooting at targets using guns
  • noun
  • /ˈʃuːtɪŋ ˈɡæləri/
  • US
translation icon : galería de tiro
  • Doug rushed to a shooting gallery and tried to shoot an artificial duck.
  • carnival shooting gallery

Yeah, so I go through the shooting gallery and you, you got to have the gun down and you're like, bang, bang, bang, bang, right.

Examples

  • At the shooting gallery, Taylor shot down 15 targets in a row and won a giant panda.

  • Doug rushed to a shooting gallery and tried to shoot an artificial duck.

  • Welcome to the shooting gallery.

    Walking Tall (1973)

  • At the shooting gallery, Taylor shot down 15 targets in a row and won a giant panda.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Next to the goat boys was a splendid shooting gallery, with more lights on it than anything else at the fair, than anything Roland had ever seen.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Palace Amusements once housed a Ferris wheel, carousel, and shooting gallery.

Synonyms

range
vsshooting gallery
171 3.5

A place to practice shooting guns or hitting golf balls

is focused on indoor firearm target practice rather than many projectile sports
firing range
vsshooting gallery
14 3.7

An area where people practice shooting at targets, usually with guns

is often indoors while this term stresses official designation
shooting range
vsshooting gallery
10 3.7

A place where people practice firing guns at targets

is often indoors rather than any outdoor facility
rifle range
vsshooting gallery
1 3.9

A place where people practice shooting rifles at targets

is for various firearm types including handguns and not only long guns
target range
vsshooting gallery
1 3.7

A place where people practice shooting at targets for training or sport

is often indoors and not limited to only fixed object practice

How Realistic

shooting gallery
  • US
1 6.9

Surface Forms

shooting gallery singular
shooting galleries plural

Morphology

shooting + gallery

The literal constituents ('shooting' = firing a gun; 'gallery' = a place or hall) would lead a learner to think of a shooting range or exhibition space rather than a drug-injection site. The drug-related sense depends on slang/metaphorical use of 'shoot' (to inject) and an idiomatic extension of 'gallery' that B1 learners who only know the basic word meanings are unlikely to infer, so the expression is opaque.

Etymology

Shooting gallery comes from old fair or indoor games where shooting at targets happened inside a gallery. The image of rows of targets and people taking aim helps explain why the phrase means 'a place to practice shooting'.