Drive-by

adj, noun

adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A crime, such as a shooting, carried out from a moving vehicle.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of a crime, etc.: carried out from a moving vehicle. not-comparable
  2. 2
    Done in a cursory or superficial manner with little regard for the issues involved; careless, offhand. figuratively, not-comparable

    "If the highly visible mockery of teenagers leads to a serious examination of the practices and institutions that perpetuate racism, perhaps it will be worth it. But I have my doubts. This kind of drive-by scapegoating does not seem conducive to genuine reflection (and it definitely doesn't encourage reflection in the individuals it scapegoats). It allows us to point the finger at other, younger, relatively powerless people, rather than consider the ways in which we're implicated in a problem that is much, much larger than a few misguided teenagers on Twitter."

Example

More examples

"After the drive-by shooting, the house was riddled with bullet holes."

Related phrases

drive by shootingdrive-by downloaddrive-by media

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.