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blunderbuss
Jan. 15th, 2013 08:18 amblunderbuss (BLUHN-der-buhs) - n., a short, wide-bore musket with a flared muzzle used to fire shot or slugs at short range; an insensitive, blundering person.
An early form of shot-gun. Interestingly, though early European colonists in North America are often depicted with blunderbuses, records suggest that rifles and muskets were actually far more common. Handgun versions of a bluderbus were sometimes called dragons, after a common decoration to the stock, and were the common firearm for cavalry because of the ease of use -- from which the name dragoons. The name was altered around 1650 from the Dutch donderbus, from donder, thunder + bus, gun, originally pipe, from busse, box, from Late Latin buxis, box, from Greek pyxίs, box (esp. one made of boxwood) -- by which one can see traces of how a gun originally meant something closer to a heavy canon.
---L.
An early form of shot-gun. Interestingly, though early European colonists in North America are often depicted with blunderbuses, records suggest that rifles and muskets were actually far more common. Handgun versions of a bluderbus were sometimes called dragons, after a common decoration to the stock, and were the common firearm for cavalry because of the ease of use -- from which the name dragoons. The name was altered around 1650 from the Dutch donderbus, from donder, thunder + bus, gun, originally pipe, from busse, box, from Late Latin buxis, box, from Greek pyxίs, box (esp. one made of boxwood) -- by which one can see traces of how a gun originally meant something closer to a heavy canon.
---L.
