bullet
bullets
A bullet is the metal object that is fired out of a gun when its trigger is pulled. Without bullets, a gun is harmless.
If someone talks about ammunition for a gun, they're talking about bullets. A bullet doesn't usually contain explosives but does its damage by penetrating whatever — or whomever — it hits. The Middle French source of bullet is boulette, "cannonball" or "small ball," from boule, "a ball," with its Latin root bulla, "round thing." To "bite the bullet" means to withstand an unpleasant but necessary situation, from the (possibly fictitious) practice of patients biting bullets during painful operations.
Definitions of bullet
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a projectile that is fired from a gun
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synonyms:
slug
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types:
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dumdum, dumdum bullet
a soft-nosed small-arms bullet that expands when it hits a target and causes a gaping wound
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full metal jacket
a lead bullet that is covered with a jacket of a harder metal (usually copper)
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rifle ball
a bullet designed to be fired from a rifle; no longer made spherical in shape
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rubber bullet
a bullet made of hard rubber; designed for use in crowd control
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type of:
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missile, projectile
a weapon that is forcibly thrown or projected at a targets but is not self-propelled
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(baseball) a pitch thrown with maximum velocity
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a high-speed passenger train
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synonyms:
bullet train
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type of:
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passenger train
a train that carries passengers
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passenger train
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘bullet'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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