Dictionary

shoot through en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (Australia, New-Zealand, informal) To leave, to disappear.
   • He did not mind the new store, but when some stirrer said that there was a motel coming, he shot through to find a better hole further inland, muttering that 'the place is getting as big as one of them southern city places!’ 1977, Valmai Phillips, Romance of Australian Lighthouses, unidentified page:
   • But on learning it was twins he shot through to Queensland into – I later discovered – the waiting arms of his lover. 2008, Elizabeth Bruce, A Show Off, Just Like Your Father, page 68:
   • ‘If I haven't got that money this evening I'll have to shoot through.’ 1963, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow, Text Classics, published 2012, page 180:
   • He shoots through to Australia, and I'm left with the kid. 1982, James K. Baxter, Howard McNaughton., Collected Plays, page 123:
   • What Father Nelson must have made of our all-too-candid (and slightly embellished) responses is anybody's guess, but it wasn't long before he shot through to New Guinea to work as a missionary with the kind of tribesmen who wear penis gourds. 2010, Stephen Lacey, Henry Loves Jazz: The Diary of a Reluctant Father, unnumbered page:
2. (Australia, New-Zealand, informal) To die.
   • Play your didgeridoo, Blue / Play your didgeridoo / Ah, like, keep playin' 'til I shoot through, Blue / Play your didgeridoo 1957, Rolf Harris, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport:
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shoot, through.
   • A mostly novelized story shot through with some factual names and dates.

Forms

Deriveds

shoot through like a Bondi tram