musket
[muhs-kit]
- a heavy, large-caliber smoothbore gun for infantry soldiers, introduced in the 16th century: the predecessor of the modern rifle.
- the male sparrow hawk, Accipiter nisus.
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Origin of musket
1580–90; < Middle French mousquet < Italian moschetto crossbow arrow, later musket, orig. kind of hawk, equivalent to mosch(a) fly (< Latin musca) + -etto -et
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for musket
Historical Examples
In spite of the wound he seized the musket and forcibly wrested it from our hero.
Brave and BoldHoratio Alger
Those are not Sniders they carry--don't know that kind of musket.
The Leopard WomanStewart Edward White
All those who could bear a musket were gone to meet the invasion.
In the ValleyHarold Frederic
There are six thousand men of a sort in the camp, but not one in five carries a musket.
Micah ClarkeArthur Conan Doyle
You were not hit by the bullet from the redcoat's musket, Dick?
The Dare Boys of 1776Stephen Angus Cox
musket
- a long-barrelled muzzle-loading shoulder gun used between the 16th and 18th centuries by infantry soldiers
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Word Origin
C16: from French mousquet, from Italian moschetto arrow, earlier: sparrow hawk, from moscha a fly, from Latin musca
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for musket
n.
"firearm for infantry" (later replaced by the rifle), 1580s, from Middle French mousquette, also the name of a kind of sparrow-hawk, diminutive of mosca "a fly," from Latin musca (see midge). The hawk so called either for its size or because it looks speckled when in flight. Early firearms often were given names of beasts (cf. dragoon), and the equivalent word in Italian was used to mean "an arrow for a crossbow." The French word was borrowed earlier into English (early 15c.) in its literal sense of "sparrow-hawk."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper