hired gun
"hired-gun" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hired gun” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A person who is employed as an armed guard, enforcer, or mercenary and who is prepared to use gunplay or similar violent methods in order to assert the interests of their employer.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hired-gun · hired gun · English
hired gun · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "H" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hired gun |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hired gun” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hired gun is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
hired gun has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is hired gun, spelled H-I-R-E-D- -G-U-N.
Definition
- 1A person who is employed as an armed guard, enforcer, or mercenary and who is prepared to use gunplay or similar violent methods in order to assert the interests of their employer.
- 2A person who is employed to advance the interests of their employer, especially in a vigorous manner using such methods as political lobbying, legal advocacy, or persuasion.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hired gun appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The hired guns, who protect diplomats, dignitaries and businesspeople, tear through the streets of the capital in convoys of armored SUVs.
[O]ne of Gore's senior advisers, top-tier lobbyist Peter Knight, is a hired gun for pharmaceuticals giant Schering-Plough.
Synonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.