musket
/ˈmʌskət/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A kind of firearm formerly carried by the infantry of an army, originally fired by means of a match, or matchlock, for which several mechanical appliances (including the flintlock, and finally the percussion lock) were successively substituted; ultimately superseded by the rifle.
noun
Example Sentences
- "Soldier, soldier, won't you marry me, with your musket, fife and drum."
- "Sam, Sam, pick up thy musket."
- "[…] you may be assured, had they known the terrour of Muskets, Caliuers and Piſtols, they would haue vſed the leſſe Bowes, Speares and Bills; […]"
- "The Souldier having his Musket ſhoulder'd, muſt ſtand ſtraight upon his Limbs, hold up his Head, and look always to the commanding Officer, […]"
- "The whole of the tumultuous scene vanished from the senses of Lionel at the flash of the musket of this man, and he sunk beneath the feet of the combatants, insensible of further triumph, and of every danger."
- "Probably, rifling evolved from the early observation of the feathers on an arrow-and from the practical results of cutting channels in a musket, originally to reduce fouling, then because it was found to improve accuracy of the shot."
Etymology
First attested around 1210 as a surname, and later in the 1400s as a word for the sparrowhawk (Middle English forms: musket, muskett, muskete (“sparrow hawk”)), from Middle French mousquet, from Old Italian moschetto (a diminutive of mosca (“fly”), from Latin musca) used to refer initially to a sparrowhawk (given its small size or speckled appearance) and then a crossbow arrow. The name was subsequently adopted for a heavier, shoulder-fired version of an arquebus, adhering to a pattern of naming firearms and cannons after birds of prey and similar creatures (compare falcon, falconet), a sense which was also borrowed into French and then (around 1580) into English. Cognate to Spanish mosquete, Portuguese mosquete. Smoothbore firearms continued to be called muskets even as they switched from using matchlocks to flintlocks to percussion locks, but with the advent of rifled muskets, the word was finally displaced by rifle.