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View synonyms for big shot

big shot

noun

, Informal.
  1. an important or influential person.


big shot

noun

  1. informal.
    an important or influential person
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of big shot1

First recorded in 1905–10
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Idioms and Phrases

see under big cheese .
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Example Sentences

VATICAN CITY — By now, news that Pope Francis has fired yet another Vatican big shot is hardly shocking.

Now, the villain of 2009 is just another big shot getting the good stuff before the rest of us.

Christie did not appreciate the man “shooting his mouth off” and thinking himself such a “real big shot.”

These are very good times indeed to be a big-shot financier.

He was the first big shot political insider whom I spoke to regularly, whose home phone number I had, things like that.

Engel probably had gone upstairs to try and peddle one of his efficiency schemes to some big shot.

Somebody kicked Fanshaw—the Jolly Lad big-shot—in the belly.

Then came a big shot that knocked over the pivot-gun, and killed half its crew.

This big shot would tear a rabbit all to pieces and I believe we are more apt to see rabbits than deer.

You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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