smoking gun

Related to smoking gun: TMZ

smoking gun

Indisputably incriminating evidence. Likened to a gun that is still smoking after having been fired. A smoking gun was revealed in the form of emails documenting the man's involvement in the money laundering scheme. So far the prosecutor has presented only circumstantial evidence, but she's expected to reveal a smoking gun against the defendant soon.
See also: gun, smoking
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

the smoking gun

Fig. the indisputable sign of guilt. (Fig. on a murderer being caught just after shooting the victim.) Mr. south was left holding the smoking gun. The chief of staff decided that the the aide should be found with the smoking gun.
See also: gun, smoking
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

smoking gun

Something that serves as indisputable evidence or proof, especially of a crime. For example, There is no smoking gun in the Oval Office; the President had no role in tampering with the evidence . This expression alludes to the smoke coming from a recently discharged firearm, a normal occurrence until the invention of smokeless powder. [Mid-1900s]
See also: gun, smoking
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

a smoking gun

COMMON If you talk about a smoking gun, you mean a piece of evidence which proves that a particular person is definitely responsible for a crime. The search for other kinds of evidence failed to produce a smoking gun. First of all, there's no smoking gun. In the course of our investigation we did not find a single piece of evidence.
See also: gun, smoking
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.

a smoking gun (or pistol)

a piece of incontrovertible evidence.
This phrase draws on the assumption, a staple of detective fiction, that the person found with a recently fired gun must be the guilty party. The use of the phrase in the late 20th century was particularly associated with the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s involving the US President Richard Nixon . When one of the Watergate tapes revealed Nixon's wish to limit the FBI's role in the investigation, Barber B. Conable famously commented: ‘I guess we have found the smoking pistol, haven't we?’
1998 New Scientist This genetic smoking gun is evidence of a migration out of Asia that is hard to refute.
See also: gun, smoking
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

a/the ˌsmoking ˈgun

something that seems to prove that somebody has done something wrong or illegal: This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for.
See also: gun, smoking
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

smoking gun

n. the indisputable sign of guilt. The chief of staff decided that the admiral should be found with the smoking gun.
See also: gun, smoking
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

smoking gun

Definite evidence of illegal or criminal activity. The term alludes to smoke emitted by a revolver or other kind of gun that has been fired, but it is also used more broadly for other kinds of malfeasance. For example, Time (Sept. 19, 1977) had it, “In fact there may be no ‘smoking gun’—no incontrovertible black-and-white evidence of wrongdoing by Lance.” The New York Times (Oct. 3, 2004) quoted National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, talking on CNN about aluminum tubes in Iraq suspected to be used for nuclear weapons, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
See also: gun, smoking
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • a smoking gun
  • a/the smoking gun
  • the smoking gun
  • in the gun
  • pull a gun
  • pull a gun on (one)
  • gun-shy
  • hold a gun to (one's) head
  • hold a gun to head
  • hold/put a gun to somebody's head
References in periodicals archive
District Court clerk, initially told The Smoking Gun that federal prosecutors were to blame for failing to properly seal the records, U.S.
Sealed records exposed on PACER
Bastone brags, though, that The Smoking Gun has never had to retract a story or apologize for a document and says its success should prove to the rest of the news industry that documents are valuable additions to stories.
High-caliber ammunition: the Smoking Gun makes its mark online with its relentless pursuit of documents
Now its Tony Blair who appears to many to be dodging a very different smoking gun -one that could show whether the Government misled the world.
Leading Article: Blair's own smoking gun
There was no "smoking gun" direct evidence at this trial.
Employment discrimination ruling carries many lessons
NEW YORK The Smoking Gun brand is cocked and fully loaded, and now poised to be a key part of Court TV's new investigative identity.
'Gun' fires on all cylinders
SOPRANOS star Edie Falco is as hot as a mobster's smoking gun between the sheets, says a close pal.
Kiss and tell: Edie Falco
Damerell, How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America: Education's Smoking Gun
I at last admitted to myself that I had recognized from the very beginning that the school, in its entirety, was unredeemed mindlessness
This leads to the ironic conclusion that--like not shredding paper documents--companies must retain their emails, even if they're keeping a smoking gun on their hands.
Business dilemma: email retention policy; new SEC regulations to address storing and restoring
(2.) Chasan-Taber L and Stampfer M, Oral contraceptives and myocardial infarction--the search for the smoking gun, editorial, New England Journal of Medicine, 2001, 345(25):1841-1842.
Use of any combined pill type confers an elevated risk of a first heart attack. (Digests)
Yet no smoking gun has surfaced, which shows how difficult it is to secure concrete evidence against the terrorist underground.
Lessons to Be Learned: The United States faces what Latin Americans already sadly know; Safety is an illusion. (Trade Talk)
Smoking gun e-mail is so common in workplace lawsuits that almost 10% of companies have been subpoenaed to produce employee e-mail.
Employers Urged to Be Wary of Workplace E-mail
The time to deal with a child--via tutoring, mentorship, internships, or simply talking and listening--is before isolation and alienation place a smoking gun in their blood-stained hands.
Stop the guns
If APBnews.com's G-Files are like a box of rich information candy, then The Smoking Gun is a whole truckload.
Empty Calories for the Mind
Bryan White, a University of Illinois animal scientist, calls the study "a smoking gun" that definitively establishes a link between feeding subtherapeutic levels of antibiotics and development of bacteria in the meat that can be transmitted to people.
Makin' Bacon
Many researchers believe that the smoking gun pointing toward the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago lies in the Yucatan Peninsula.
The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions