shoot one's wad
"shoot-one-s-wad" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shoot one's wad” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To expend all of one's resources or efforts; to express all the arguments or ideas which one has.
Corpus desk
Index EN-shoot-one-s-wad · shoot one's wad · English
shoot one's wad · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 15 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" 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 | shoot one's wad |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “shoot one's wad” in English
Rare enough to double-check
shoot one's wad is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for shoot one's wad in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is shoot one's wad, spelled S-H-O-O-T- -O-N-E-'-S- -W-A-D.
Definition
- 1To expend all of one's resources or efforts; to express all the arguments or ideas which one has.
- 2To spend all of one's money.
- 3To ejaculate.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how shoot one's wad appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Well, I guess I have about "shot my wad," and had better "cork up," or I might find my way to the waste-basket.
There, I have shot my wad. I have told you in a few words what we have done, and you, my brothers, are now standing just where we were 25 years ago.
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.