prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (words are sexy)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
blunderbuss (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.

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 67
8 9 10 11 12 1314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 13th, 2025 04:48 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios