Meaning
Something unlikely to succeed or only remotely possible, such as a risky bet, a doubtful plan or an outsider's chances. Works as a noun ('that rescue deal is a long shot') and in the negative 'not by a long shot', meaning not at all or not even close. Informal and neutral in tone; often wry or sympathetic rather than dismissive, and 'not by a long shot' is nearly always negative. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The earliest records are military rather than equestrian. A 1595 English translation of Minadoi's history of the Turkish-Persian wars uses 'long shot' for a long-barrelled gun made in Algiers, and the term then named the extreme distance a gun could reach; because a target standing that far off was safe, 'long shot' came to stand for anything remote and improbable. The Phrase Finder traces the modern sense through that 'remote distance' route, and Etymonline dates the figurative use, 'something unlikely', to 1867, with 'by a long shot' attested by 1830 in American English. Horse racing, where a long shot is a horse running at long odds, fed the same idea in 19th-century betting talk, but the documentary trail clearly favours gunfire imagery as the older source.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a bit of a long shot
- by a long shot
- longshot (solid compound)
- not by a long shot
Usage Examples
- Applying for that grant is a long shot, but the application costs nothing.
- She took the seat in 2019 as a long shot candidate nobody had bothered to campaign against.
- He is not a natural singer, not by a long shot.