Harquebus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A portable gun with a long barrel and matchlock mechanism, fired from the shoulder and requiring a forked rest for support
2. An early shoulder-fired firearm featuring a slow-burning fuse-lit ignition system, commonly used by infantry in Renaissance warfare
3. A manually-operated musket with a lit match cord as its firing mechanism, developed before the flintlock and widely employed in medieval and early modern armies

Etymology: The harquebus was a hand-held gun whose name describes its design: it was a "hook" plus a "box." The Middle Dutch "hakebus" joined "haak," meaning hook, to "bus," a word for a tube or firelock. The hook was a forked rest or support that the gunner hooked over a wall, a rampart or the side of a boat so the heavy barrel could be steadied before firing. The gun's name therefore recorded how it was used, not only what it was. The word passed into French as "harquebuse" and was borrowed into English from there, which is why the English spelling looks French while the core parts are Germanic. The "bus" element is the same word that gave the modern "box" its older sense of a gun barrel, so the name literally pairs a support with a firing tube.

Synonyms: arquebus