Idiom
shot in the dark
Meaning
A guess, attempt, or choice made with little or no evidence or knowledge.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I do not know the answer, so it is just a shot in the dark.”
“I had never visited the city before, so picking a restaurant was just a shot in the dark.”
“Without any data to support his hypothesis, the scientist admitted his proposal was merely a shot in the dark.”
Examples
simple
“I do not know the answer, so it is just a shot in the dark.”
contextual
“I had never visited the city before, so picking a restaurant was just a shot in the dark.”
complex
“Without any data to support his hypothesis, the scientist admitted his proposal was merely a shot in the dark.”
Real-World Examples
“Many scientists think the new virus spilled over directly from a wild animal, perhaps at a Chinese wet market; some posit that the pathogen leaked accidentally from a local laboratory in Wuhan, China, the pandemic’s likely epicenter. All of them lack the slam-dunk evidence to prove one hypothesis and rule out the rest. It's all a shot in the dark.” Key words
Related idioms
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