MEANING
A guess or attempt made with little or no information to guide it.
Use it for
describing an unsupported guess; showing an attempt made without useful evidence; qualifying a speculative answer; distinguishing informed inference from near-blind guessingDistinguishes a guess with little supporting knowledge from a conclusion based on evidence. Writing functions: Unsupported guess.
Words that belong together
- little more than a shot in the dark
- take a shot in the dark
On the page
Without a date or a surname, searching that archive was a shot in the dark.
Her answer was a shot in the dark, not a conclusion drawn from the data.
Word forms
- Base
- a shot in the dark
Usage notes
Idiomatic noun phrase; often a shot in the dark. Shots in the dark is possible for multiple guesses, but do not conjugate the phrase. Register: informal. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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