Footgun
noun, verb, slang
noun, verb, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any feature likely to lead to the programmer or user shooting themselves in the foot. derogatory, humorous, slang
"This is a footgun! ES6 should have specified that it either fulfills, rejects, or just throws some sort of synchronous error. Unfortunately, because of precedence in Promise libraries predating ES6 Promise, they had to leave this gotcha in there, […]"
- 2 by extension, generalised from (1.): An opportunity or object that allows the unfortunate to mostly figuratively but sometimes literally shoot themselves in the foot. A less obvious footgun may be a pitfall (1.).
Verb
- 1 To shoot oneself in the foot. idiomatic
Example
More examples"This is a footgun! ES6 should have specified that it either fulfills, rejects, or just throws some sort of synchronous error. Unfortunately, because of precedence in Promise libraries predating ES6 Promise, they had to leave this gotcha in there, […]"
Etymology
From foot + gun.
Related phrases
More for "footgun"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.