arquebus
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of arquebus
First recorded in 1525–35; from Middle French harquebusche (with intrusive -r- ), from Middle Dutch hākebusse, equivalent to hāke “hook“ + busse “gun” (literally, “box”), from Late Latin buxis for Latin buxus “box tree, boxwood; flute made from boxwood”; see box 1
Example Sentences
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The Spanish conquistadors who invaded Mexico, for example, put greater faith in crossbows and cold steel than the arquebus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
Unlike the arquebus shouldered by foot soldiers, the pistol was often viewed with suspicion and disapproval.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
By the fifteenth century, the Janissary corps of the Ottoman Empire were using firearms like the arquebus, an early long gun, in battle.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
FOR all the centuries of refinement that separate a modern rifle from a Renaissance arquebus, the basic idea has not changed.
From Economist ● May 7, 2015
As the arquebus succeeded the bow and arrow, so the musket, a smooth and single-barrel muzzle-loader with a flint-lock and a wooden ramrod, succeeded the arquebus.
From Inventions in the Century by Doolittle, William Henry
The Spaniard brought only 11 ships, some 450 men, 16 horses and a modest collection of cannons, crossbows and arquebuses, precursors to the musket.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Armorers did a brisk business in swords, helmets and arquebuses, forerunners of the musket.
From Time Magazine Archive
He organized a force of seventy men armed with arquebuses, to be quickly summoned in an emergency, and required them and all citizens to assemble for service whenever a strange sail was sighted.
From The History of Cuba, vol. 1 by Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Marguerite ran to a captain who was on the point of leaving the Louvre and was engaged in having his men's arquebuses loaded.
From Marguerite de Valois by Dumas père, Alexandre
The front row, indeed, was well furnished with arquebuses, while pistols, swords, daggers, and pikes gleamed in abundance behind.
From Henry of Guise; (Vol. III of 3) or, The States of Blois by James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
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.
