bullet
Pluralbullets
Verbbullets, bulleting, bulleted
Pluralbullets
Formsbullets, bulleting, bulleted
- 1A metal projectile fired from a gun at high speed.
The bullet lodged in the wall just above the doorway.
Forensic experts matched the bullet to a specific rifle.
Note
Behind the gun's projectile is a little ball. Middle English bullet came from Old French bullete, a diminutive of boule, "ball", and French boulet later shaped it as well. That roundness runs through the word's later uses, from the printed dot to the iron ball of road bowling. Slug, pill and cap can stand in for it, but bullet is the plain, neutral name.
- 2A printed solid-circle symbol, "•", used to mark items in a list.
Replace the numbers with a bullet if the order doesn't matter.
The designers chose a square bullet instead of the usual round dot.
Note
Typesetters gave the dot this name, and it is also called a bullet point. A bulleted list presents parallel items with no ranking, so a numbered list is the better choice when sequence matters. The mark need not be round, and designers sometimes use a square instead, but the name stays the same. Placing one before a line of text is the verb to bullet.
- 3A complete round of unfired ammunition: the projectile, the cartridge case, and the propellant charge together.
She slid a fresh bullet into the chamber before the range opened.
The clerk asked which caliber of bullets the hunter needed.
Similarround, cartridge, shell
Note
Here the word stretches from the projectile to the whole cartridge: case, powder and all. That stretch is informal. In careful writing, and wherever the parts matter, call the complete unit a round or a cartridge and keep bullet for the projectile itself. Casual talk at a gun counter uses bullets for both.
- 4Any object that travels through the air at extremely high speed.
The quarterback fired a bullet across the field into the receiver's hands.
His throw from deep center was a bullet that beat the runner home.
Note
Sports writing loves the construction a bullet of a shot, in which bullet works almost like an adjective of speed, as in "a bullet of a left foot shot." Used on its own, it describes a throw, pass or strike that arrives before anyone can react. The image always comes from the gun's projectile, but the object can be anything a player sends.
- 5To highlight text by placing a graphic dot in front of it, or as if by doing so.
The editor asked me to bullet the key findings in the summary.
He bulleted every requirement to make the contract easier to scan.
Similarlist, itemize, highlight
Note
Start with the spelling: the verb keeps a single t, so it is bulleted and bulleting, never bulletted. It is a writer's and editor's verb, informal but at home in reference books and manuals, and you can bullet sections, terms or talking points. The past participle is common as an adjective, as in a bulleted list, which often sounds more natural than the verb itself.
- 6Characterized by very high speed; extremely fast.
Japan's bullet train glides between cities at remarkable speed.
The midfielder delivered a bullet pass that split the defense.
Note
A noun is doing an adjective's work here. It appears only before another noun, as in bullet train and bullet chess, and lends that noun the speed of the gun's projectile. It cannot follow a verb, since a train is never "very bullet," so use fast when you need a predicate. The chess compound is often clipped to the one-minute game itself.
- 7To move at very high speed, as a bullet does.
Watch the sleds bullet down the icy track.
The train bulleted through the tunnel without slowing.
Similarhurtle, speed, race, rocket, zoom
Oppositecrawl
Note
This verb of motion wants a direction, so something bullets through, down, past or up. Hisham Matar writes of a train that "bulleted through the tunnel," and chart writers use it for a record that races up the rankings, which brings it close to the chart notation. It is informal and vivid. In neutral prose, sped or shot does the same work.
- 8A chart notation showing that a song is climbing in the pop music rankings.
The single earned a bullet as it surged up the chart.
Losing its bullet signaled that the song's momentum had stalled.
Note
Chart talk turned the mark into an idiom. "Number one with a bullet," or any chart position with a bullet, means a song that is still rising. Pete Wingfield's 1975 song "Eighteen with a Bullet" builds its lyric on the gun pun, with a finger on the trigger and a high place on the chart. Hallee Bridgeman (2013) still treats the phrase as industry talk.
- 9A large scheduled repayment of a loan's principal made as a single lump sum; a balloon payment.
The borrower faced a hefty bullet when the five-year loan matured.
Refinancing let them avoid the bullet scheduled for next year.
Similarballoon
Note
Lending has its own use for the word. It names a loan built to end with one large payment of principal at maturity, instead of being paid down installment by installment. Bankers also call it a balloon payment. It is the natural end of an interest-only loan, where the principal is not reduced along the way, and borrowers who cannot meet it usually refinance.
- 10A year of time served in prison.
The judge handed him a bullet for the lesser charge.
After three bullets inside, she walked out determined to start over.
Note
Prison slang counts a sentence in years, and each year is a bullet, so three bullets means three years inside. The word belongs to the argot of inmates and the criminal world. In ordinary writing it signals a voice, usually a character's or a quoted speaker's. Outside that setting readers will hear a gunshot, and year or stretch is the plain choice.
- 11
- 12To dismiss someone from a job; to fire them.
The new boss bulleted half the department in his first month.
Companies that bullet staff without warning damage their reputation.
Similarfire, sack, axe, dismiss, can
Oppositehire
Note
Football writing shows this sense at work. In Iain King and John Hartson's John Hartson's Celtic Dream Team (2012), a manager "was bulleted after a run of bad results." The passive comes naturally, because the story is usually about the person who was let go. It is slang like axe or can, fine in conversation and sports talk but out of place in a formal letter.
- 13Ellipsis of bullet chess.
Online platforms let players queue for bullet at any hour of the night.
She lost three games of bullet in a row on time.
Note
Chess at its most frantic is clipped from bullet chess to bullet alone, and each side gets about one minute for the whole game. Leonard Barden places it at the end of a scale that runs from 15-minute rapid through five-minute blitz to one-minute bullet. It usually takes no article (players play bullet), but single games are bullet games.
- 14A letter informing someone that they have been turned down for a job, a place at a school, or a competition.
Like the sealed verdict every hopeful applicant dreads opening.
The bullet from her first-choice university arrived on a gray Monday morning.
After a dozen bullets, he reworked his résumé from scratch.
Similarrejection
Oppositeacceptance
- 15Among card players, the ace.
Like drawing the trump that quietly outranks every other card at the table.
She drew a bullet on the river and won the hand.
Holding a pair of bullets, he pushed all his chips forward.
Similarace
Note
Poker talk prizes it in pairs, because two bullets are among the strongest starting hands a player can be dealt. In Robert L. Vann's The Competitor (1969), the speaker waits through long years of dealing before he finally lifts "the Bullet." The word suits the card table or fiction about cards. In plain writing, ace is clearer.
- 16The best workout time recorded at a track on a given day over a particular distance, traditionally marked on the sheet with a printer's bullet.
The filly posted the bullet for six furlongs on a fast track Tuesday.
Clockers noted a bullet beside the gray's time on the worksheet.
Note
Track clockers borrowed the printer's dot and let it name what it marked: the fastest workout of the day at a given distance. A horse that posts the bullet worked faster than every other horse going that distance at that track that day. The usage belongs to racing in the US and Canada and usually takes the definite article, as in the bullet.
- 17A small candy shaped roughly like a bullet, made of a cylinder of licorice coated in chocolate.
Halfway through the movie she passed me the bag, and I took one more bullet.
The milk bar near the school sold bullets by the scoop alongside the other lollies.
Note
Only Australians mean a sweet by this word. It sits on the lolly shelf, and Australians spell its filling liquorice. They usually speak of the sweets in the plural, by the bag or the scoop. Elsewhere, a request for bullets will be heard as the gun projectile, so readers outside Australia may need the context spelled out.
- 18The heavy iron ball that players hurl along the road in a game of road bowling.
The thrower swung his arm low and sent the bullet skimming along the lane.
Each player hurls the bullet, and the one who finishes the course in fewest throws wins.
Similarbowl
Note
Road bowling is played on ordinary public roads in Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland, and the bullet is its ball. It is solid and heavy, and players throw it so that it runs along the road surface. The winner covers the set course in the fewest throws. Most listeners outside Ireland will not know this sense, so introduce the sport before using the word.
- 19A piece of ammunition manufactured specifically for use in a sling or slingshot.
Ancient slingers carried molded lead bullets that flew farther than stones.
She loaded a smooth bullet into the sling and took aim.
- 20A weight, such as a plumb or sinker, used to pull a fishing line down through the water.
He threaded a bullet onto the line above the hook before casting.
A heavier bullet held the bait steady against the current.
Note
Anglers use this name for a small, dense weight on the line. It carries the hook down through the water and keeps the bait at the chosen depth, even against a current. You thread a bullet onto the line above the hook. Sinker is the more general word for the same piece of tackle.
- 21To strike or wound a target by firing bullets into it.
The gang bulleted the storefront in the night.
He swore he would bullet the next man to step through the door.
Note
Few speakers use the verb this way, and those who do are speaking slang. Trizz's "'Woop' Freestyle" (2021) uses it of shooting someone, with the past left unmarked. Bulleted already belongs to the list-making verb and the slang for firing, so this sense is easily misread. In ordinary writing, shot is the safe word.
- 22A small ball or rounded pellet of any material.
He pressed the dough into a tidy bullet no bigger than a pea.
The beads were tiny bullets of colored glass strung on thread.
Note
The little ball behind the name survives here, true to its French diminutive origin. Robert Louis Stevenson's Virginibus Puerisque (1881) calls the Earth "this lukewarm bullet," a deliberately small word for the whole planet. The word has since narrowed to firearms, so modern readers will hear a gun unless the context says otherwise. Write ball or pellet instead.
- 23A cannonball: the large iron ball fired from a cannon.
Note
Early gunnery used the word for a cannon's shot, and that shot was not always iron. John Stow's The Annales of England (1592) describes a ship near Greenwich firing a piece "charged with a bullet of stone." Because the word now belongs to small arms, calling a cannonball a bullet reads as period language. It suits historical fiction but misleads anywhere else.
- 24The fetlock of a horse: the joint above the hoof, set with a tuft of hair at the back of the leg.
The farrier felt along the mare's bullet for any sign of swelling.
Long hair hung over the stallion's bullets in the old illustration.
Note
Horsemen no longer use the word this way, and riders and farriers today simply say fetlock. You may still meet it in old writing about horses, where it names the joint itself. In modern prose a horse's "bullets" will be misread as ammunition, so use fetlock unless you are quoting or deliberately writing in a period style.
- 25A young or small bull, or a male calf.
The boy raised the bullet from a calf into a sturdy young animal.
A pair of bullets bawled at the gate, eager for feed.
Note
This is a different word that happens to share the spelling. It is bull plus the diminutive -let, as in booklet. It turns up mostly in playful talk alongside coinages like cowlets and steerlets, where the made-up diminutive is the joke. Spoken aloud, it makes every listener think of ammunition. For a real animal, calf or bull calf is clearer.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English 'bullet', originally an official tag or badge, from Old French 'bullete', a diminutive of 'boule' ('ball'). It was later influenced by Middle French 'boulette' and French 'boulet'.
Formed from 'bull' plus the diminutive suffix '-let'.