Yesterday a number of my friends & I saw a press conference in which linebacker Jeremiah Trotter said he thought the Kansas City Chiefs “shot their load” in the first half of yesterday’s game. “Hillarity ensued.”
I appear to be the only one among us who thinks that there’s a “legit” (i.e. not obscene) meaning for this phrase, namely referring to a shotgun shot metaphor, and therefore a good reason for someone to be using this phrase at a press conference without cracking a smile and without the press censoring it. Compunding the problem is that the Cambridge Online Idiom Dictionary is only providing a “spooge” (as one friend put it) definition.
So I throw this out to the Dopers: can I get some more non-obscene etymology and/or recent press cites of the phrase? Is this something that an American would say in common speech these days with innocent intenet?
Ballistic products CSD20 wad
American Rifleman, Feb 2000
In this era of steel or non-toxic shot for all waterfowl and some upland game, some hunters cling to their lively 20ga. shotguns. Ammunition makers offer an ever-growing variety of 20-ga. non-toxic shot alternatives, but some of us still like to roll our own. For shotshell handloaders, Ballistic Products has a high-capacity Cushioned Steel Driver Twenty (CSD20) 20-ga. wad designed to hold as much as 7/8 oz. of small size steel shot, or 3/4 oz. of large sizes. Shot column heights may be adjusted by inserting 28-ga. fiber wads. Four oval-shaped holes are molded in the wad near the arch-dome gas seal to let the air out as the fiber wad is seated.
And from http://www.alliantpowder.com/beginner/how_to_shotshell.php
The components of a loaded shotshell are a case, primer, powder, wad, and shot.
That is a bizzarre Oxford definition, and strange it doesn’t mention the non-literal usage.
I’ve always heard the idiom in question as “shoot his wad,” with the polite company cop-out that this is a term from a shotgun shell. Of course, the way that it’s used, meaning to have finished and be useless thereafter (at least for a while), can only be properly understood by the double-entendre meaning. The “literal” usage of a shotgun analogy doesn’t make much sense when the phrase is used.
I’ve also heard “shot his bolt,” being a crossbow reference. I’ve heard it used in two similar but subtly different ways. The first, meaning that you’ve taken your shot and missed, and as such things are pretty hard to reload quickly, you are pretty much done for. The second, basically meaning simply that you’ve taken your best (and generally only) shot, but not necessarily having the implication that you are now doomed because it failed, but more of a wait and see thereafter as to the results.
Thanks; I searched the forums for “shooting” and “shot load” to no avail. So, it sounds like there are still some Americans who say this as a gun reference, no sexual innuendo…?
Well, it seems to me it’s missing grammatically required dashes. It should read: if a man shoots his load, semen – thick liquid containing a man’s seed – comes out of his penis.
Why not just say “slang for ejaculation”? That definition sounds like a definition you’d find in one of those online slang dictionaries where anyone can contribute.
Interesting that this phrase has gone to the second level of slang.
In the way that the linebacker used it, it is often used to mean “He only had so much and he used it all up at once, now it’s gone.” Like a band that has one big hit and disappears. Or the Chiefs game, which I know nothing about but assume they performed very well in the first half then had nothing else left in the second.
No, even aside from that; it seems like the sort of clumsy clinical definition a 12 year old who was trying to use grown-up words would write. Furthermore, it seems to miss the point of the idiomatic phrase in favor of the graphic sexual imagery.
It may just be an East Texas thing. Trotter is from Hooks, and was a pulpwood cutter during high school. I wouldn’t say the expression is heard every day around here, but we hear it often enough to not automatically think of it in sexual terms. In fact, I’ve been known to say someone “shot their load” early in a football game.
This area tends to have idiomatic expressions all its own.
