lone gunman
9
7.5
- noun
- /loʊn ˈɡʌn.mən/
- Literature
:
tirador solitario
- In the aftermath of the event, officials confirmed that there was only one lone gunman responsible for the attack.
Examples
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The police revealed that the shooting was carried out by a lone gunman acting without any accomplices.
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I'm just not buying the "lone gunman" theory.
Blog text (5) -
But who is the lone gunman?
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Now each of these presidents was killed by a lone gunman, right?
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From what I gather, it was a lone gunman.
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You still chasing the lone gunman?
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John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Oswald.
Academic text (1991) -
The conventional wisdom is that President McKinley's assassination was the work of a lone gunman, Leon Czolgosz.
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Witnesses reported that a lone gunman entered the bank and demanded money from the tellers.
How Organized
- NSFW
48
5.3
- NSFW
57
4.9
- NSFW
15
6.0
- Literature
9
7.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a single person who commits a shooting' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'lone' (alone) with 'gunman' (a person who uses a gun), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the phrase. The adjective+noun composition is a regular, cross-linguistic pattern and does not require idiomatic knowledge.
Etymology
Lone gunman comes from a simple image: lone means by themselves and gunman means a person with a gun. That's why it means 'a single person who shoots with no helpers'.