Talk:gunshot

RFV discussion: September 2023–June 2024

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gunshot

Sense 2: "The sound made by a discharging firearm." If somebody says "I heard a gunshot", they mean that they heard sense 1: "The act of discharging a firearm." I can say "I heard an elephant" but that doesn't give "elephant" a second sense relating only to sound. Equinox ◑ 18:44, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Oxford joins the sound definition to their first definition "The firing of a gun", which is not exclusively an act; it is more nearly an event. DCDuring (talk) 20:34, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Unlike elephants gunshots can definitely ring out--"gunshot rang out" gives thousands of google book hits. Likewise a gunshot can be muffled without the gun being fired under a pillow or something, so long as the sound is muted. Look at this book where "A muffled gunshot rang out." Winthrop23 (talk) 19:52, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

We still need evidence of actual use (in more than one collocation, I think). Besides "gunshot rang out", maybe "gunshot echoed", "loud/muffled gunshot", or "decibel" + "gunshot". DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that any of these would be unambiguous evidence. For example, the attestable expression "the bell rang out" has not lead any OneLook Dictionary to have a "sound" definition for bell. DCDuring (talk) 16:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Honestly I think collocations of this kind are good evidence that gunshot is sometimes used to refer to the sound made by the firing of a gun:

• "A loud gunshot swept"
• "A gunshot echoed"
• "A silenced gunshot resonated"
• "a popping sound like a muted gunshot"
• "The second muted gunshot"
• "A muted gunshot reverberated off the decaying skyscrapers"

And so on. I'll grant that "muted gunshot" by itself is inconclusive, but muted bells cannot reverberate off skyscrapers, and loud elephants cannot sweep.

Also, just on the point about bells ringing out, I can't help but feel that bells are a special case here in that bells literally ring out--to create sound with a bell is to ring that bell. Elephants do not ring out. Winthrop23 (talk) 18:21, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Unlike elephants, gunshots are instantaneous events. It seems impossible to me to separate the event from the sound it makes. I can't imagine a sentence that manages to distinguish the two. This, that and the other (talk) 08:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

It’s possible if you take into account the fact that sound takes time to travel - “the gunshot reached her after 2 seconds” seems pretty implausible compared to “the sound of the gunshot…”, though. Theknightwho (talk) 08:44, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• The wording of definition 3 is now more than 110 years old. DCDuring (talk) 15:16, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest merging and rewriting definitions 2 and 1 along the lines of DCDuring's first comment: remove "act" (or at least make it "act or instance"), and just define it as "the discharging of a firearm", and optionally fold "; the sound this makes" or something into it. I am initially inclined to agree with agree with Equinox, and with DCDuring's point about bells, that the sound is not a separate sense. I'm surprised we have "the sound of an explosion" at explosion and am inclined to RFV that, too (it's been in the entry since its creation in 2004 by LGagnon). Dictionary.com does have "sound" as a definition for that one, but their usex of "loud gunshot" hardly seems conclusive since I can also heard a loud elephant or bell. - -sche (discuss) 17:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm having trouble imagining what unambiguous evidence would look like to justify distinct definitions for this kind of cause-and-effect metonymy. In this case the cause (an event) and its effect (also perceived as an event) are so immediately linked in ordinary experience. DCDuring (talk) 20:28, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

• RFV failed Denazz (talk) 17:19, 5 June 2024 (UTC)