# Shot dead vs shot to death



## babai

I saw the headlines that in Las Vegas, at least 59 people were shot dead by the terror attack. I am really shocked by this evil event. Firstly, I want express my condolence for the loss of the nation and also I want to pay my homage to the persons who lost their lives. I am with the huminity and I stand by the U.S.A as a human being. 
Now my question is do the two sentences below carry the same meaning. Please clarify it. I am confused.
1. 59 people were shot dead.
2. 59 people were shot to death.


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## Copyright

Yes, they mean the same thing.


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## zaffy

After seeing such a title "*Bodycam Shows Cops Shooting Man After Pointing Airsoft Gun at Them", *do we know if the suspect was shot to death or just wounded with a bullet?


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## london calling

No, we don't know.


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## zaffy

So these interpretations are correct, right?

Three people were shot in a car race early morning.  (They might have been wounded or killed)
There people were shot dead in a car race early morning. (They were killed)


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## Andygc

No, because the meaning of the first one depends entirely on context.

Three people were shot in a car race early this morning. They are recovering in hospital.

Three people were shot in a car race early this morning. A man has been charged with their murder.


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## zaffy

And if I say "Three people were shot down", does it make sense? If so, what would that mean?


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## london calling

I'd say a plane/helicopter was shot down, not a person or people.


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## zaffy

So we don't from the tile if the suspect was shot to death or not? Right?


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## Uncle Jack

zaffy said:


> And if I say "Three people were shot down", does it make sense? If so, what would that mean?


"Shot down" might work for people who were launching an assault, but it is rare. "Gunned down" is far more common. where multiple shots are fired simultaneously or in quick succession (from one or many guns).


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## zaffy

And how do I interpret this sign? Will they be shot to death or just injured with a bullet so as to prevent them from approaching an aircraft?


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## london calling

I hope it doesn't mean shoot to kill, but it could mean that a well.


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## Andygc

Of course it means shoot to kill. Shooting intruders to wound them is a fantasy of film makers - firearms training concentrates on hitting the part of the body most likely to result in a stop. This is the sort of target the military uses for practice.


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## london calling

The warning is addressed to 'inmates'. I sincerely hope the military doesn't shoot its prisoners dead. 😕


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## Andygc

My point was that aiming to wound is not what soldiers or police are trained to do. We don't know where this sign came from and we do not know who the "inmates" are. No doubt zaffy will in due course remember to provide source, context and background.


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## zaffy

Andygc said:


> No doubt zaffy will in due course remember to provide source, context and background.



Sorry. It's a screen from a series "Prison Break". The action of the series takes place in a prison.


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## Andygc

I have no doubt the prison guards would feel perfectly justified in shooting a prisoner attempting to get to a helicopter and would not worry in the slightest if the shot prisoner died.


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## PaulQ

zaffy said:


> Will they be shot dead or just injured with a bullet so as to prevent them from approaching an aircraft?


It doesn't say. It merely says they will be shot. As has been pointed out, being hit by a bullet fired by a trained person often results in death. Both injured and dead people have difficulty approaching aircraft, so it doesn't matter.


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## zaffy

You might be wondering why I'm asking but we have two different words in Polish so if I hear in the news things like  "Three people have been shot during a police raid", I never know whether they're dead or wounded. In Polish it would be clear right away.


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## kentix

The whole point of the sign is to deter anyone from trying.

The real message is "If you do this, you might very well die."

If that's not enough to deter someone you don't know what else they might be willing to do so you stop them any way you can.


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## kentix

_Three people have been shot *dead* during a police raid._

If they want to make it specific, they can.

Lots of times when people are shot they are rushed away in ambulances and a reporter at the scene wouldn't know the outcome. Lots of people with gunshots, even if they die, don't die right away.


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## JulianStuart

kentix said:


> _Three people have been shot *dead* during a police raid._
> 
> If they want to make it specific, they can.
> 
> Lots of times when people are shot they are rushed away in ambulances and a reporter at the scene wouldn't know the outcome. Lots of people with gunshots, even if they die, don't die right away.


 
In English we add _separate_ words for clarity. when details are known: shot, shot dead, shot and killed, shot and injured etc.  In Polish it seems letters are added to the root word meaning shoot to clarify the meaing.


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## zaffy

JulianStuart said:


> In Polish it seems letters are added to the root word meaning shoot to clarify the meaing.


Exactly, we add a prefix to the verb and it's all clear.


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## zaffy

JulianStuart said:


> In English we add _separate_ words for clarity. when details are known: shot, *shot dead*, *shot and killed,* shot and injured etc.



So these two work equally good, right?

_Three people have been *shot* *dead* during a police raid.
Three people have been *shot and killed* during a police raid._


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## JulianStuart

zaffy said:


> So these two work equally good, right?
> 
> _Three people have been *shot* *dead* during a police raid.
> Three people have been *shot and killed* during a police raid._


They work equally _well_.
Presumably you have a word (the root word?) for shot when the speaker _does not know_ whether the vicitm was killed or just wounded?


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## zaffy

JulianStuart said:


> Presumably you have a word (the root word?) for shot when the speaker _does not know_ whether the vicitm was killed or just wounded?



No, we don't. You need to know in advance whether the victim is dead or wouned due to a gunshot.


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## kentix

In English, shot, in reference to a gun, means a bullet left the gun and touched some part of the person in question's body.

It could have gone into their head and killed them, it could have gone into their chest without causing fatal injuries, it could have gone through the flesh on their arm (in and then out the other side) or it could have just grazed them so it did a little damage to a limited part of their skin. Those all qualify as being shot because the damage was caused by a bullet fired from a gun. Whether the person who was hit died is really a separate question.


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## JulianStuart

zaffy said:


> No, we don't. You need to know in advance whether the victim is dead or wouned due to a gunshot.


So how would a reporter send a story to his newspaper if he did not know if the victim died or not?  Enquiring minds need to know


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## zaffy

JulianStuart said:


> So how would a reporter send a story to his newspaper if he did not know if the victim died or not? Enquiring minds need to know


They would say three people were 'shot', and he would use the verb that meant shot but not killed.


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## JulianStuart

zaffy said:


> They would say three people were 'shot', and he would use the verb that meant shot but not killed.


But if the reporter did not know - they might have been killed - you use one that _specifically_ means "not killed" - now I'm confused again.


JulianStuart said:


> Presumably *you have a word* (the root word?) for shot *when the speaker *_*does not know*_ whether the vicitm was killed or just wounded?





zaffy said:


> *No, we don't. *You need to know in advance whether the victim is dead or wouned due to a gunshot.


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## zaffy

JulianStuart said:


> But if the reporter did not know - they might have been killed - you use one that _specifically_ means "not killed" - now I'm confused again.


Yeah, you find it as confusing as we do English . I guess we simply first assume someone is alive, always a safer option. They might say
"There people were shot but it's not known yet if they survived"


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## JulianStuart

zaffy said:


> Yeah, you find it as confusing as we do English . I guess we simply first assume someone is alive, always a safer option. They might say
> "There people were shot but it's not known yet if they survived"


So that's like English - adding _words_ for clarity (rather than prefixes) when there isn't a single word that carries the complete meaning.


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## kentix

In a U.S. newspaper you might see, "Three people were shot but no information on their condition has been released."


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## Ponyprof

Exactly. That's how the media here always refer to gunfire incidents.

"A man was shot downtown on Friday night."

Then "He was pronounced dead at the scene" or "he was taken to hospital with undisclosed injuries" or "he is recovering from non life threatening wounds in hospital" or etc.


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## zaffy

So we don't know whether the victim and the mother were shot to death or just wounded with a bullet, right?


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## Tegs

Correct.


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## Packard

Except that I Googled the incident and there was a give-away in the headlines,  so I knew that there were injuries but no fatalities.


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## zaffy

So this what I find weird and dislike about the use of the verb 'shot' in English. That YT footage was released now in July, so they knew very well the victims were just wounded. So why don't they make it clear right away for the audience if you all know the verb "shot" is ambiguous or, at least, not clear enough. Or you don't realise it?  Again, if that news report was in Polish, I would know right away if the victim and the mother were dead or not.

Wouldn't it be easier to distinguish between "she was shot" (wounded) and "she was shot to death" (dead)?


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## Tegs

I don’t think it is ambiguous - it works the same way as “she was stabbed”. It describes what happened. 

It does not give us the result of what happened (minor injury, major injury, or death). But you always get the rest of the details in the news report, not necessarily in the same sentence that described what happened. 

The gunman shot ten people. Four are in critical condition, three died at the scene, and a further three died in the hospital.


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## Packard

To add to the "shot" ambiguity, it is also the verb of choice for taking photographs. The context suggests that the police officer survives the "shooting".  

_The Newsday photographer shot the police officer in the act of handcuffing the suspect._


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## Myridon

Let's try it this way - "Shot" is about the fact that the result of "shooting at something" is "hitting it". It's not about the result of "hitting it."  It's about what happened to the bullet, not what happened to the target.


zaffy said:


> Again, if that news report was in Polish, I would know right away if the victim and the mother were dead or not.


Again, if the reporter doesn't know, how can you know?


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## lingobingo

And the point of a news headline is to grab your interest sufficiently to make you want to read the whole article – for example, to find out what happened to the person who was shot.


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## Uncle Jack

We use words to match the message we want to convey. It is very easy to say that someone shot and killed someone else, as I have just done. There are other ways of saying the same thing, but "shot to death" is not one of them.

People write and say things for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps person A fired a shot at person B, and the bullet grazed their ear. This isn't a very serious injury, but someone might well choose to say that A shot B to indicate that it was a very close thing to B being killed. Alternatively, someone else might say that A shot B to sensationalise the situation.

In a different situation, perhaps person M fired a shot at person N and killed them. It is clear that N has been shot but it might not be clear to a speaker/writer that they were killed. Perhaps the writer or speaker knows that N is dead but does not want to reveal the fact at this stage. Perhaps the writer or speaker is more concerned that a shot was fired than whether the person was killed or not.


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## Tegs

Uncle Jack said:


> It is very easy to say that someone shot and killed someone else, as I have just done. There are other ways of saying the same thing, but "shot to death" is not one of them.


I agree. "Shot to death" isn't a phrase you'd see the media use. And I wouldn't say "he was shot to death". I'd say "he was killed" or, if I wanted to include the manner of death "he was shot and killed".

"Shot to death" also implies to me that the person was shot multiple times, until he died. That is, shot repeatedly until death. Stabbed to death conveys the same thing - stabbed multiple times until dead. Not stabbed once and died from one wound.


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## zaffy

And does this work? 
"He was shot and injured".


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## kentix

We just don't see it as the role of the verb shot to give that information since in many situations it can't.

When someone is shot it means a bullet hit them. That's really all it can mean since getting hit by a bullet has many potential outcomes. English is not an agglutinative language where you just take a base word and merrily add prefixes and suffixes to refine meaning. You add words to refine meaning. It's a basic difference between language forms. English puts separate ideas in separate words and orders them in a way to convey meaning. Word order is critical. In many other languages it's not very critical since the meaning comes from adapting the base words in different ways to mean the same thing no matter their position in the sentence. 

So in English shot means "hit with a bullet" (in the gun context) and nothing more fundamentally. There is no prefix or suffix available to change that meaning.


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## Packard

_He was shot, but the wound was superficial.  He was treated at the scene and released._
_He was shot, but the wound was not critical  He was transported to the hospital, treated and released._
_He was shot and the wound was critical; he later succumbed to his wound at the hospital._
_He was shot and declared dead at the scene._


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## zaffy

Say a murderer is being questioned. We know the victim  was shot and killed. Died instantly. One bullet was enough. Any chance 'shot' would be used on its own? 

"Did the victim say anything before you shot him?"

Or would 'killed' or 'shot and killed' be used?


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## london calling

Slightly/very killed? That's like being a bit pregnant, Mr P. 🤣


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## JulianStuart

zaffy said:


> Say a murderer is being questioned. *We know the victim  was shot and killed. Died instantly. One bullet was enough. *Any chance 'shot' would be used on its own?
> 
> "Did the victim say anything before you shot him?"


In that context, there is zero remaining ambiguity in the meaning.


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## heypresto

zaffy said:


> Say a murderer is being questioned. We know the victim  was shot and killed. Died instantly. One bullet was enough. Any chance 'shot' would be used on its own?
> 
> "Did the victim say anything before you shot him?"
> 
> Or would 'killed' or 'shot and killed' be used?


In this context, the police person and the suspect would know the victim had been killed, and so there's no need to mention it. 

And if he or she was, as you say the murderer, we know the victim died, so again there's no need to mention it.


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## kentix

zaffy said:


> "Did the victim say anything before you shot him?"


My guess is that this is most likely since it refers to the specific act that was performed. Death was the result, but the action was pulling the trigger. The dividing line between no crime committed and crime committed was the pulling of the trigger.


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## Uncle Jack

zaffy said:


> And does this work?
> "He was shot and injured".


It is fine.


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