organ gun

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English

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WOTD – 27 July 2024

Etymology

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An organ gun illustrated in Konrad Keyser’s work Bellifortis, a 15th-century manual of military technology.
The machine infernale or infernal machine, a homemade 25-barrel organ gun built by Giuseppe Marco Fieschi and used in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate King Louis Philippe I of France on 28 July 1835. The weapon is now displayed at the Musée des Archives Nationales in Paris.

From organ +‎ gun. The multiple barrels of the device were thought to resemble the pipes of a pipe organ.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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organ gun (plural organ guns)

  1. (firearms, historical) A large, portable firearm normally supported by wheels, in which bullets may be fired from a row of several tubes in succession; it was chiefly used from the 14th to the 17th century.
    Synonyms: infernal machine, mitrailleur, rabauld, ribauldequin, ribaudkin, ribault
    • 1911, William Balck, “VI. Machine Guns”, in Tactics, Volume 1: Introduction and Formal Tactics of Infantry‎[1], page 259:
      The attempts to re-invest the artillery with its one-time superiority were directed in two channels: one aimed at perfecting shrapnel, which had been rather neglected up to this time (England, Prussia, Austria), while the other resurrected the mediaeval idea of the "barrel-organ gun," with a view of assembling a number of rifle barrels and of combining thereby the accuracy of the small arm with the moral effect of canister.

Hypernyms

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Hyponyms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “organ gun, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2023.

Further reading

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