Idiom
shoot the breeze
Meaning
To chat idly or generally waste time talking.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“We sat on the porch and shot the breeze for hours.”
“While waiting for the delayed flight, the two strangers shot the breeze about their favorite vacation spots.”
“The old friends, reunited after decades, spent the entire evening shooting the breeze, their idle chatter masking the unspoken weight of years apart.”
Examples
simple
“We sat on the porch and shot the breeze for hours.”
contextual
“While waiting for the delayed flight, the two strangers shot the breeze about their favorite vacation spots.”
complex
“The old friends, reunited after decades, spent the entire evening shooting the breeze, their idle chatter masking the unspoken weight of years apart.”
Origin
The phrase was first recorded in 1919 as a slang allusion to the act of talking into the wind. It was preceded by a 1908 variant, shoot the bull, in which the latter term referred to empty talk or lies.
Key words
Related idioms
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