big shot

big shot

noun Informal.
an important or influential person.

Origin:
1905–10

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins
World English Dictionary
big shot
 
n
informal an important or influential person

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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00:10
Big shot is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Etymonline
Word Origin & History

big shot
"important person," 1929, Amer.Eng., from Prohibition-era gangster slang; earlier in the same sense was great shot (1861).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Slang Dictionary

big shot definition


and bigshot
  1. n.
    a very important person. : I'm no big shot, but I do have a little power around here.
  2. mod.
    mighty; overbearing; overly important. : If you think that a big shot title impresses me, you're wrong.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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American Heritage
Idioms & Phrases

big shot

see under big cheese.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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