The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shooting \Shoot"ing\, a. Of or pertaining to shooting; for shooting; darting. Shooting board (Joinery), a fixture used in planing or shooting the edge of a board, by means of which the plane is guided and the board held true. Shooting box, a small house in the country for use in the shooting season. --Prof. Wilson. Shooting gallery, a range, usually covered, with targets for practice with firearms. Shooting iron, a firearm. [Slang, U.S.] Shooting star.
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(Astron.) A starlike, luminous meteor, that, appearing suddenly, darts quickly across some portion of the sky, and then as suddenly disappears, leaving sometimes, for a few seconds, a luminous train, -- called also falling star.
Note: Shooting stars are small cosmical bodies which encounter the earth in its annual revolution, and which become visible by coming with planetary velocity into the upper regions of the atmosphere. At certain periods, as on the 13th of November and 10th of August, they appear for a few hours in great numbers, apparently diverging from some point in the heavens, such displays being known as meteoric showers, or star showers. These bodies, before encountering the earth, were moving in orbits closely allied to the orbits of comets. See Leonids, Perseids.
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(Bot.) The American cowslip ( Dodecatheon Meadia). See under Cowslip.
Shooting stick (Print.), a tapering piece of wood or iron, used by printers to drive up the quoins in the chase.
--Hansard.
Wiktionary
alt. (context chiefly US idiomatic dated English) A firearm, especially a handgun. n. (context chiefly US idiomatic dated English) A firearm, especially a handgun.
WordNet
Usage examples of "shooting iron".
That old French fool is standing up and ricketing around, and I turn to see he has raised his shooting iron and drawed a bead on Watson!
There were those who called Logan an outlaw, but he was family, and he was handy with a shooting iron.
The shooting iron also proclaimed that Malloy was an expert marksman.
Finally, Marvin took a big puff from his cigarette with his eyes still trained shyly down at the table, and, as he exhaled from that first deep, satisfying puff, Marvin shifted his weight a little in order to reach down and pluck his shooting iron from the holster.
Cordova, get out of walking around with a two-thousand-year-old shooting iron on your hip and your pockets full of bullets?
Would you extend me the courtesy of letting me have a look at that shooting iron of yours?
Aye, but there was the pistol in my pocket, and the likelihood that those interfering bobbies would have wanted to know who I was, and what business I had there - God, what a to-do there would be if it was discovered that the celebrated Sir Harry Flashman was creeping about disguised as a scarecrow, with a shooting iron in his pocket, at the scene of an attempted murder!