smoking gun

noun

: something that serves as conclusive evidence or proof (as of a crime or scientific theory)

Examples of smoking gun in a Sentence

This document is the smoking gun that proves that he was lying.

Recent Examples on the Web Forcible vendor lock-in through tactics like these would be a smoking gun for the DOJ. —

Patrick Moorhead, Forbes, 12 Sep. 2024 Yet that's not quite the smoking gun to explain grocery inflation, according to New York Federal Reserve researcher Thomas Klitgaard. —

Alina Selyukh, NPR, 9 Sep. 2024 The scientific smoking gun for early horse domestication, though, was a set of changes found on some Botai horse teeth and jawbones. —

William Taylor, The Conversation, 3 Sep. 2024 Its investigation has involved thousands of documents, and the committee interviewed multiple employees, which failed to locate a smoking gun. —

Steven Levy, WIRED, 30 Aug. 2024 See all Example Sentences for smoking gun

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.