Blowdart

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small pointed missile fired through a hollow tube by the force of a person's breath, often used as a primitive hunting or hunting-like weapon
2. A slender dart blown from a tube with a puff of air, sometimes tipped with poison and used by certain peoples for hunting
3. An arrow-like projectile propelled by exhaling into a hollow pipe, a simple weapon that relies on lung power rather than a spring or gunpowder

Etymology: A blowdart is what it sounds like: a dart propelled by blowing through a tube, and the compound is simply "blow" plus "dart". The two parts have deep roots of their own. "Blow" traces back through Middle English "blowen" to Old English "blāwan", ultimately from a very old Indo-European base meaning to blow or swell. "Dart" is the more interesting half. It passed through Frankish "darōþu", a word for a spear, into Medieval Latin "dardus", then Old French "dart", and reached English in the Middle English period. Because the parts are so transparent, the compound needs no special coinage story. Its meaning follows directly from its pieces: the blow supplies the force, and the dart supplies the missile. The "dart" half kept its original sense of a pointed throwing weapon, so a blowdart is best understood as a small, light projectile driven by breath rather than by a bow or the hand.

Synonyms: dart