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potshot

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

L325785 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

adj

Etymology: From pot + shot. 1858, shot taken for the (cooking) pot, namely for food; see pothunter. Sense “opportunistic criticism” from 1926. Sense “drunk” from obsolete pot (“cup used for drinking liquor”).

  1. Drunk.

noun

Etymology: From pot + shot. 1858, shot taken for the (cooking) pot, namely for food; see pothunter. Sense “opportunistic criticism” from 1926. Sense “drunk” from obsolete pot (“cup used for drinking liquor”).

  1. A shot taken at an easy or random target.

    to take a potshot at

    Bannister leaped up, ran lightly across the intervening space, and with his repeater took a potshot at the galloping horseman.

  2. Criticism of an easy target; a cheap shot.

    He takes his share of potshots (mostly at the Da Vinci surgical robot), but the conscience of the film is in the stories of Essure, a procedure marketed to women as a hassle-free alternative to tubal ligation

    And until recently, anyone could read his Facebook posts, which included vulgar potshots at Nancy Pelosi and her husband and a pronouncement that supporters of Joseph R. Biden Jr. suffered from a “mental affliction.”

verb

Etymology: From pot + shot. 1858, shot taken for the (cooking) pot, namely for food; see pothunter. Sense “opportunistic criticism” from 1926. Sense “drunk” from obsolete pot (“cup used for drinking liquor”).

  1. simple past and past participle of potshoot