potshot

See also: pot shot and pot-shot

English

Alternative forms

• pot shot, pot-shot

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”).

Noun

potshot (plural potshots)

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

   to take a potshot at

   • 1908, William MacLeod Raine, Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West‎^[1]:

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

2. (figurative) Criticism of an easy target; a cheap shot.
   • 2018 July 26, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “A documentary muckraker takes on the tech sector of health in The Bleeding Edge”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[2], archived from the original on 29 July 2018:

     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

   • 2025 May 13, Richard Fausset, “The Pope’s Florida Brother, a MAGA Disciple, Plans to ‘Tone It Down’”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     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.”

Translations

shot at an easy target or at random

• Bulgarian: изстрел отблизо (izstrel otblizo)
• Danish: kasteskud
• Finnish: räiskäisy (one); räiskintä (fi) (many), sokkolaukaus
• German: Schuss aufs Geratewohl m

criticism of an easy target

• Finnish: halpa kritiikki, summittainen kritiikki
• German: Seitenhieb (de) m

Related terms

• pothunter

Verb

potshot (third-person singular simple present potshots, present participle potshotting, simple past and past participle potshotted)

1. To fire potshots.
   • 1910, William MacLeod Raine, A Texas Ranger‎^[4]:

     Howard appeared in the doorway. “Say, Sig, go down to the corral and saddle up Teddy for Steve, will you? Some of his friends have been potshotting at him again. No damage done, except to my feelings, but there's nothing like being careful.”

Translations

to fire potshots

• Finnish: räiskiä (fi)
• German: drauflosballern

Adjective

potshot (comparative more potshot, superlative most potshot)

1. (obsolete, slang) Drunk.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:drunk

Further reading

• “pot-shot adj.” under “pot n.¹”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present

Anagrams

• hot pots, hot spot, hotpots, hotspot