square shooter
- noun
- Informal
:
persona honesta
- You can rely on him to be a square shooter in all his dealings; he never tries to deceive anyone.
Examples
-
Everyone knows he's a square shooter; he always tells the truth in his business deals.
-
As a square shooter, she gained the trust of her colleagues by being honest and transparent.
-
I'm a square shooter.
Synonyms
13
3.7
A person who tells the truth in a direct, honest way
2
5.9
A person who always tells the truth and follows moral rules
Antonyms
How Honest
∞
1.0
88
2.1
- Informal
128
2.5
- Offensive
707
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
square + shooter
The adjective 'square' readily conveys 'honest/straightforward', and English uses agentive nouns (‑er) to denote people, so a learner could plausibly infer 'a person who is square' from the parts. However, 'shooter' has a strong literal sense ('one who shoots') and the compound is a colloquial idiom whose agentive extension is not fully predictable without exposure, making the meaning only partially derivable.
Etymology
Square shooter may come from old game rooms where a shooter was a player taking a shot, and a square player followed the rules and did not cheat. That's why a square shooter means 'honest and straightforward'.