Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Showing results for Gatling gun. Search instead for whaling+gun.
Synonyms

Gatling gun

American  
[gat-ling] / ˈgæt lɪŋ /

noun

  1. an early type of machine gun consisting of a revolving cluster of barrels around a central axis, each barrel being automatically loaded and fired every revolution of the cluster.

Gatling gun British  
/ ˈɡætlɪŋ /

noun

  1. a hand-cranked automatic machine gun equipped with a rotating cluster of barrels that are fired in succession using brass cartridges

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of Gatling gun

1860–65, named after R. J. Gatling (1818–1903), U.S. inventor

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.

So it was a Gatling gun of wins, just one after another.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 11, 2024

The Gatling gun from the United States could fire three thousand bullets per minute.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

He ascended to the NFL beat at the Washington Times, and one colleague later wrote that Hurney’s “prose had the lyrical quality of a Gatling gun, but he could find news.”

From Washington Post • Feb. 10, 2021

Novelist Ben Fountain finds everything from replica flintlock muskets, “wardrobe” handguns the size of a cellphone, a carriage-mounted 1883 Gatling gun through to bullet-splat jewelry, deep-concealment holsters, and triple barrel shotguns.

From The Guardian • Jun. 28, 2016

This young lady talked incessantly, and fired her words after the manner of a Gatling gun, without taking aim at anybody in particular.

From A Bicycle of Cathay by Lowell, Orson

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.