call the shots

1. 1.

   exercise authority or be in charge

   “Who is calling the shots in this house?”

   Synonymscall the tunewear the trousers

   Broadercontrol

Questions about call the shots

What does call the shots mean?

call the shots means "exercise authority or be in charge".

What is another word for call the shots?

Close synonyms include call the tune, wear the trousers. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is call the shots a common word?

call the shots is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.