mitraille

[prettygoodword]

Well, that was even less consistent posting than I intended. This week is also looking possibly intermittent due to external obligations. But in the mean time:


mitraille (MEE-trai) - small missiles such as grape, canister, fragments of iron, and the like loaded into a canon.


In modern French, the word specifically means grapeshot, but when it was adopted into English, it was the slightly more general scrap iron loaded in a gun or canon. Before that, it meant small coins, as a diminutive of mite, a small coin.

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

You need this. No, you do. Yes, yes, you do.

I am sure the origamis get a little flat sometimes, yes? So you need this.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Those are pretty cool sculptures.

The cognate of flattening origami is deflating balloons.

---L.