squib
/skwɪb/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.29 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A kind of slow match or safety fuse.
noun
Any small firecracker sold to the general public, usually in special clusters designed to explode in series after a single master fuse is lit.
American usage
noun
A malfunction in which the fired projectile does not have enough force behind it to exit the barrel, and thus becomes stuck.
noun
The heating element used to set off the sodium azide pellets in a vehicle's airbag.
Example Sentences
- "English Navy squibs set fire to two dozen enemy ships in a Dutch harbor during the 16th-century battle against the Spanish Armada."
- "The making and selling of fireworks and squibs, or throwing them about on any street, is […] punishable by fine."
- "Ye nevvs-paper vvitlings! ye pert ſcribbling folks! / VVho copied his ſquibs, and re-echoed his jokes, […]"
- "Of the dozen or so surviving articles, squibs, and letters to the editor, the most remarkable appeared in the Whip and Satirist’s February 12, 1842, issue, and disclosed the existence of a cabal of gay men in New York's otherwise wholesome nightscape of brothels and riots."
- "November 1, 1709, Richard Steele, The Tatler The squibs are those who in the common phrase of the world are called libellers, lampooners, and pamphleteers."
- "In this squib I will prove that the number of possible metrical parsings into feet under these assumptions […]"
Etymology
Usage
- American usage
- Dated
- Australian usage
- Colloquial