English

Verb

shoot through ‎(third-person singular simple present shoots through, present participle shooting through, simple past and past participle shot through)

1. Used other than as an idiom: see shoot,‎ through.
2. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) To leave.
   • 1977, Valmai Phillips, Romance of Australian Lighthouses, unidentified page,

     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!’

   • 1982, James K. Baxter, Howard McNaughton. Collected Plays, page 123,

     He shoots through to Australia, and I'm left with the kid.

   • 2008, Elizabeth Bruce, A Show Off, Just Like Your Father, page 68,

     But on learning it was twins he shot through to Queensland into – I later discovered – the waiting arms of his lover.

   • 2010, Stephen Lacey, Henry Loves Jazz: The Diary of a Reluctant Father, unnumbered page,

     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 **** gourds.

Derived terms

• shoot through like a Bondi tram