Meaning in Plain English

To shoot in the dark — or to take a shot in the dark — is to act, guess, or attempt something without the information you need to do it well. The image is of firing a weapon at a target you cannot see: the effort may be sincere, but the chance of hitting anything is low.

  • Nobody had tested the idea before, so the launch was a shot in the dark.
  • We were shooting in the dark until the survey data arrived.
  • Her diagnosis was a shot in the dark — she had only three symptoms to go on.

The phrase usually describes a guess, a hunch, or an attempt made under uncertainty. It is not about secrecy, surveillance, or technology. An article about law enforcement and encryption may use shooting in the dark as a loose metaphor, but that is a modern extension of the idiom, not its subject.

How to Use the Phrase

Common patterns:

  • shoot in the dark (verb): He was shooting in the dark with that answer.
  • a shot in the dark (noun): It was a shot in the dark, but the guess was right.

The tone is informal and slightly playful. In careful writing, guess without evidence, act on incomplete information, or estimate blind state the idea more plainly. The idiom is at home in conversation, sports commentary, detective stories, and everyday problem-solving.

The Literal Sense Is the Oldest

The literal meaning — firing a weapon when you cannot see the target — is as old as the words themselves. Soldiers firing into darkness, hunters shooting into cover, and guards firing at unseen sounds all gave English speakers a ready picture of effort without a visible goal. Etymonline records the word shot in English from the Old English period, with the sense of a projectile or discharge.

The Figurative Sense: A Guess in the 1800s

The figurative use — a guess or attempt made without information — is a later development. Phrase histories place it in nineteenth-century English, when a shot in the dark came to mean a random or blind attempt, especially a guess. The image works because a shot fired without a visible target may still occasionally hit something, which is exactly how people think of an educated guess: unlikely, but not impossible.

The exact first printed use is not settled. Dictionaries and phrase references give slightly different earliest examples depending on the edition and the form counted (verb phrase vs. noun phrase), so it is safer to say the figurative sense is documented from the nineteenth century than to claim one undisputed first use. Cambridge Dictionary defines a shot in the dark as a guess based on little information, and Merriam-Webster records it as an idiom meaning a wild guess.

What the Phrase Is Not About

Because the words sound dramatic, shooting in the dark is sometimes borrowed for debates about secrecy, surveillance, or encryption — for example, describing investigators who cannot read encrypted messages. That usage is a modern, figurative extension and does not explain where the idiom came from. The phrase itself has no special connection to technology, crime, or intelligence work; it simply describes acting without a clear target.

(The library previously carried a longer draft about the encryption debate under this page. That material is unrelated to the idiom and has been removed from the article; it is preserved in the project files in case it is ever developed separately.)

  • A wild guess — a guess with little basis.
  • Fly blind — proceed without information (from aviation).
  • In the dark — lacking information: We were kept in the dark about the decision.
  • Grasp at straws — try anything when the situation is desperate.
  • Play it by ear — improvise without a fixed plan.

Quick Questions

Is “shoot in the dark” the same as “guess”?

Close, but the idiom adds the image of effort aimed at an invisible target — the guess is made despite having almost nothing to work with.

Is the phrase literal or figurative today?

Almost always figurative. The literal sense (actually firing a weapon in darkness) still exists, but everyday use means acting or guessing without information.

Does the phrase relate to encryption or surveillance?

No. It is occasionally borrowed for those topics as a loose metaphor, but the idiom is about guesswork, not technology.

Sources and Further Reading