How to Use smoking gun in a Sentence

smoking gun

noun
Definition of smoking gunnext
  • This document is the smoking gun that proves that he was lying.
  • Are the bricks in the photo the smoking guns they’ve been made out to be?
    — Elizabeth Logan, Glamour, 13 Mar. 2024
  • The logic is compelling, sure, and the smoking gun could be out there.
    — Jason P. Dinh, Discover Magazine, 19 July 2022
  • Skye Lazaro: This is a case in which there doesn't appear to be any smoking gun.
    — Natalie Morales, CBS News, 24 Feb. 2024
  • The clues kept coming in, yet a smoking gun was elusive.
    — Paul Schrodt, Men's Health, 30 Nov. 2022
  • The father-daughter pair’s find, which was just six miles away from de la Salle’s, was the smoking gun.
    — Christian Thorsberg, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Apr. 2024
  • Morgan Loew: There's not one smoking gun that ties Lori to any of these murders.
    — Jonathan Vigliotti, CBS News, 13 May 2023
  • The biggest difference is the lack of a smoking gun in the Sarver story.
    — Katie Wiseman, The Indianapolis Star, 7 Mar. 2024
  • Turned out, things were about to get a lot worse for Gray, because his wrecked, smoking van was a smoking gun.
    — Natalie Morales, CBS News, 3 Feb. 2024
  • Well, Christine, TikTok is asking the same thing—where’s the smoking gun?
    — Steven Levy, Wired, 28 Aug. 2020
  • Then Love finds the smoking gun, of sorts: Joe's bloody t-shirt in Henry's diaper pail.
    — Neha Prakash, Marie Claire, 20 Oct. 2021
  • The smoking gun is turning out to be an exploding cigar.
    — Robin Abcarian, The Mercury News, 29 Feb. 2024
  • Her messy blond bun and uniform of black turtlenecks have not been held up as a smoking gun in her subterfuge.
    — Washington Post, 8 Dec. 2021
  • Anagnopoulos said that the podcast doesn’t produce a smoking gun.
    — Richard Ruelas, The Arizona Republic, 11 Feb. 2023
  • The smoking gun, in Marr’s view, was a study that found live viruses lingering in the air seven to 16 feet away from patients.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2021
  • Help dad up his game in the kitchen with a smoking gun, which can add intense flavors to meat and cheese or even cold smoke on cocktails and ice cream.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 10 June 2020
  • Musk’s first installment of the Twitter Files produced no smoking gun showing that the tech giant had bent to the will of Democrats.
    — Will Oremus, Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2022
  • But the news of the Hunter Biden investigation is hardly a smoking gun.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 14 Dec. 2020
  • Of course, there’s no one smoking gun that’s true for all situations.
    — Molly Longman, refinery29.com, 29 Oct. 2021
  • And then Veloz came up with the smoking gun: one of Morie Kimmel's relatives had a photograph.
    — Maureen Maher, CBS News, 23 Dec. 2023
  • That was a smoking gun for Gumowska, who now had ammo enough to pursue her case.
    — Mark Ellwood, Robb Report, 6 Apr. 2022
  • First, the newly sparking and smoking gun fired bolts that ascended into the sky.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes, 10 Nov. 2022
  • There’s no evidence here that there’s some kind of a smoking gun, that somebody did something wrong.
    — Helen Branswell, STAT, 18 Apr. 2024
  • But the smoking gun came from an accelerometer clipped to the subjects’ waistbands, which measured the rise and fall of their center of mass.
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 27 Dec. 2020
  • In this case, there remains no smoking gun to prove either side of the authorship question.
    — Stephen Cox, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2024
  • So far, the smoking gun of inflation has not been detected.
    — Dennis Overbye Hiroko Masuike, New York Times, 4 Sep. 2023
  • This kit includes a smoking gun, wood chips, a smoke infuser, a dome lid, and a charging cable.
    — Jessica Comstock, Better Homes & Gardens, 13 Jan. 2024
  • Neither Harry nor his lawyers have yet produced a smoking gun.
    — William Booth, Washington Post, 7 June 2023
  • The distinctive colorful spots, containing both iron and phosphate, are a smoking gun for certain chemical reactions—rather than microbial life itself.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 25 July 2024
  • Curiosity’s continuing journey There’s no smoking gun pointing to how the sulfur was formed, but the team continues to analyze the data Curiosity collected to determine how and when each mineral formed.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 20 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'smoking gun.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: