sure as shooting

(redirected from sure as shootin')

(as) sure as shooting

With utmost certainty; quite definitely. (That is, as sure as a gun is to fire when its trigger is pressed.) It had to have been Mike who leaked our plans to the press, sure as shooting! Come into a great fortune and, as sure as shooting, the number of those who would be your friend increases tenfold.

See also: shoot, sure

sure as shooting

Most certainly, as in It's going to snow tonight, sure as shooting, or That grizzly is sure as shooting going to make dinner out of us. This idiom has replaced the older sure as a gun, dating from the mid-1600s, a time when guns fired with far less certainty. [Second half of 1800s]

See also: shoot, sure

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

sure as shooting

sure as shootin'

AMERICAN, INFORMAL

People say sure as shooting or sure as shootin' to emphasize that they are certain about something. Sure as shooting, someone will tell me what I've chosen is wrong. It's not the best computer, but it's sure as shootin' not the worst.

See also: shoot, sure

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

sure as shooting

Dead certain. This nineteenth-century Americanism may be a descendant of the older simile, sure as a gun, which dates from the mid-seventeenth century and appears in the works of Samuel Butler, John Dryden, William Congreve, and George Meredith, among others. According to S. A. Hammett (A Stray Yankee in Texas, 1853), American southerners drew the comparison from their much-loved rifles and rendered the alliterative cliché.

See also: shoot, sure

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References in periodicals archive ?

In a follow-up to 2017's God's Problem Child, Nelson manifests the modern reality of aging: Getting older still means getting closer to death, but it sure as shootin' doesn't mean there isn't plenty of work and fun to be had.

LAST MAN STANDING

I hate it when he says "sure as shootin'." I tried red onions anyway, though--cut in half, as the Old Timer had instructed, and placed on top of the lid with the cut side up.

One time, he told us that a scarecrow with a red hat would keep deer out of the garden, sure as shootin'. So we put a scarecrow out there, and put a red hat on it, and the deer came the next night and treated our garden like a salad bar.