Backshooter
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A cowboy who kills someone by shooting them in the back US
"It would be so easy for Jed to jerk his rifle from its sheath, lever a cartridge into the firing chamber and put a bullet right between Colter's shoulder blades. For a fleeting moment, Jed considered doing just that. But he knew he was not a backshooter and more than that, he wanted to see the truth of the murder in Colter's eyes and make him squirm before dying at the end of a rope..."
- 2 A treacherous person broadly
Example
More examples"It would be so easy for Jed to jerk his rifle from its sheath, lever a cartridge into the firing chamber and put a bullet right between Colter's shoulder blades. For a fleeting moment, Jed considered doing just that. But he knew he was not a backshooter and more than that, he wanted to see the truth of the murder in Colter's eyes and make him squirm before dying at the end of a rope..."
Etymology
From backshoot + -er.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.