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Glite Dictionary
sawed-off shotgun

sawed-off shotgun

7 8.2
A gun with very short barrels that shoots many small metal balls at close range
  • noun
  • /ˈsɔːdˌɔf ˈʃɒtˌɡʌn/
translation icon : escopeta recortada
  • Dude, you're holding a 12-gauge, double-barrel, sawed-off shotgun.
  • carrying sawed-off shotguns
  • barrel of a sawed-off shotgun
  • selling sawed-off shotguns

They turn out he once took turned up with a sawn off shotgun, right.

Examples

  • A week ago, a treasury agent was murdered with a sawed-off shotgun while he was working undercover.

    Boiling Point (1993)

  • The man with the raincoat drops it to reveal a sawed-off shotgun.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • My daddy runs through that door with this sawed-off shotgun.

    Sonny (2002)

  • Why do you have a sawed-off shotgun?

    The Missouri Breaks (1976)

  • Police say her husband fired first with a sawed-off shotgun, and they responded.

    Blog text (10)

  • Back in 1997, when Williams was barely 19, he said the police caught him with a sawed-off shotgun.

    Blog text (31)

  • Bobby raises his sawed-off shotgun and points it at the two old men behind the counter.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • But the manager had been robbed and beaten before and kept a sawed-off shotgun underneath the counter.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • I had just taken my boots off, ready to get in, when these guys came out of the jungle with sawed-off shotguns and pointed them right at our stomachs. Robertson showed them her permit, and they waved the group on.

    Academic text (2002)

  • The robber threatened the store clerk with a sawed-off shotgun during the heist.

Synonyms

shotgun
vssawed-off shotgun
324 4.1

A gun fired from the shoulder that shoots many small pellets

has shortened barrels for greater portability and wider close-range spread
scattergun
vssawed-off shotgun
1 7.1

A short-range gun that fires many small pellets

uses shortened barrels to increase portability and widen the pattern at close range
shotty
vssawed-off shotgun
  • Slang
1 9.9

A slang word for a shotgun

refers to a shortened-barrel form valued for portability and wider spread

Surface Forms

sawed-off shotgun singular
sawed-off shotguns plural

Morphology

sawed-off + shotgun

The noun phrase is directly compositional: 'sawed-off' denotes something shortened by sawing and 'shotgun' is a short-range firearm, so a learner who knows both words will infer a shotgun with shortened barrels. This adjective+noun construction is a standard, cross-linguistically common pattern, so the core physical meaning is transparent to a B1 learner (though pragmatic connotations like illegality or use at close range are extra information).

Etymology

The name sawed-off shotgun comes from the literal act of cutting the long barrel off a shotgun, so the gun becomes sawed-off and much shorter. That's why it now means a 'short' gun that is 'easier to hide' and gives a 'wider' shot at 'close range'.