musket
Americannoun
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a heavy, large-caliber smoothbore gun for infantry soldiers, introduced in the 16th century: the predecessor of the modern rifle.
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the male sparrow hawk, Accipiter nisus.
noun
Etymology
Origin of musket
1580–90; < Middle French mousquet < Italian moschetto crossbow arrow, later musket, originally kind of hawk, equivalent to mosch ( a ) fly (< Latin musca ) + -etto -et
Explanation
A musket is a long, front-loaded, over-the-shoulder gun. Muskets have been used in many wars, such as the American Civil War. There are many types of guns. One that's gone out of style is the musket. This weapon of choice for infantrymen was distinctive in a few ways. It was fired over your shoulder (or sometimes mounted on a stand), and it had a very long barrel. It was also muzzle-loaded, which means it was loaded through the front of the gun, not the back, like most contemporary guns.
Vocabulary lists containing musket
Star-Spangled Vocabulary: Patriotic Words
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The American Civil War
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The American Revolution - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Musket ammunition, Bronze Age axes and a Roman coin were also found in the 47-acre "field of dreams".
From BBC • Aug. 9, 2023
Love and his wife, Judy, founded what became Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores as Musket Corporation in 1964, according to the statement.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 8, 2023
Ms. Attea, who worked at Annisa and High Street on Hudson, has taken the reins of the Musket Room in NoLIta, with Ms. Mick as pastry chef, and changed the restaurant’s focus.
From New York Times • Oct. 19, 2021
Outside of scant gallery shows at that time, her first solo exhibition and retrospective was in 2016 at Moderna Musket in Stockholm, about seven years after her death.
From Washington Post • Apr. 29, 2021
Over the course of the next 15 years, New Zealand was convulsed by the so-called Musket Wars, as musketless tribes either acquired muskets or were subjugated by tribes already armed with them.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
