scattershot

comparative more scattershot · superlative most scattershot

1. Covering a broad range in a random and unsystematic way.

   Don't Look Up aims too high for its scattershot barbs to consistently land, but Adam McKay's star-studded satire hits its target of collective denial square on.

   2021, Critics Consensus, Don't Look Up, archived from the original on 04 Feb 2026

   3 more examples

   They were appalled by his idea of making a spy service out of a scattershot collection of Wall Street brokers, Ivy League eggheads, soldiers of fortune, ad men, news men, stunt men, second-story men, and con men.

   2007, Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Penguin, published 2008, page 4

   The result, disappointingly, is a scattershot work that is, by turns, entertaining and wearisome, energetic and hokey, delightfully evocative and cheaply sensational; dead-on in its conjuring of zeitgeist-y atmospherics, but often slow-footed and ham-handed in its orchestration of social details.

   2013 September 10, Michiko Kakutani, “A Calamity Tailor-Made for Internet Conspiracy Theories”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 05 Aug 2020

   Oh, and then there’s the hardest challenge of all: Google, famously scattershot in its product launches and quick to abandon things, has to stay focused on a new product and actually develop a meaningful replacement to search without killing it in a year and starting over.

   2023 May 8, Nilay Patel, “What happens when Google Search doesn’t have the answers?”, in The Verge, Vox Media, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2023

   Synonyms: scattergun