Meaning
A final remark or gesture, typically barbed or pointed, delivered as someone leaves or just before an exchange ends; usually a single cutting comment made at a moment when the target cannot reply. Common in accounts of arguments, interviews, resignations, and departures of every kind. Informal to neutral; almost always marks a barbed or unanswerable final comment. Regional use: General English (nautical and military literal origin).
Origin
A long-standing account treats this as a reshaping of 'Parthian shot', after the Parthian horse archers of antiquity, famed for loosing arrows backwards at pursuers while feigning retreat; Samuel Butler alluded to the tactic in Hudibras (1678), and 'Parthian shot' itself appears literally in 1832 and figuratively in The Times in 1842. The documented chronology complicates that story, because 'parting shot' is recorded earlier: literally in an 1818 voyage narrative by John McLeod, surgeon of HMS Alceste, and figuratively in the Quaker periodical The Friend in 1828, both predating the documented 'Parthian shot'. The Phrase Finder concludes the two expressions were most likely coined independently, and that the corruption theory, though still repeated in usage guides, is not supported by the evidence currently available.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- final shot
- Parthian shot
- parting blast
- parting jab
Usage Examples
- As the lift doors closed she fired a parting shot about his grammar.
- His resignation letter ended with the parting shot that the committee had never read a single submission.
- The moderator's parting shot, thanking the panel for their candour, stung more than any of the questions had.