blunderbuss

[prettygoodword]

blunderbuss - n., a short, wide-bored musket with a flared muzzle for scattering shot.


Seventeenth-century ancestor of the shotgun. That gun-with-trumpet thing seen in depictions of early North American settlers. The flare, btw, is not to facilitate scattering the shot but loading it into the barrel. From Dutch donderbus, from donder, thunder + bus, gun (itself from busse, tube, from Latin buxis, box), altered by resemblance to blunder.

I've always loved the sound of the word.

---L.

Comments

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Ah, so you (w/sh)ouldn't see a breech-loading blunderbuss, then?

It is an attractive word. Self-alliterative.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Nope -- didn't have breech-loaders back then.

---L.