Luntstock

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A wooden staff with a clamp at one end that holds the slow-burning match used to ignite old cannon
2. The handled stick carrying a lighted lunt, a slow match, used by gunners to fire historic artillery pieces
3. An early firing implement, a pole fitted with a slow match that artillerymen used to touch off a cannon's charge

Etymology: Luntstock is a compound of "lunt," a slow-burning match or fuse, and "stock," a stick or staff. Gunners in the age of muzzle-loading artillery used it as a handle: a long wooden staff with a length of smouldering match at its tip, which the crew lowered to the touch-hole of a cannon to ignite the charge. The staff kept the burning end well away from the powder and the gunner's hands. "Lunt" itself is a word of Dutch or Low German origin, related to the same root as "lint" in its sense of a smouldering or burning cloth, and it passed into English as a term for slow match, the cord soaked in saltpetre that burned steadily without a flame. The two parts together make the word a plain technical compound, describing exactly the tool a gunner held.

Synonyms: slow match, linstock, match