Sarbacana

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of blowgun typically used in hunting, where projectiles are propelled by breath through a long, narrow tube
2. A hunting instrument that consists of a hollow tube through which darts are launched using breath as the force
3. An air-powered tool for shooting darts or small projectiles, commonly crafted from a slender cylinder for precision射击

Etymology: Sarbacana entered Spanish from Arabic, and its ancestry is traced through Persian to the Arabic "zarbatana," a word for a blowgun. The tube was the weapon the word named, and the sense of a long blowpipe for darts carried over into Spanish and then into English, where it is still used for the same weapon. The Arabic term is generally understood to come from Persian, and the same root is thought to lie behind the verb "to strike" in Persian, a link that connects the tool's name to the force of the breath that drives its dart. Spanish writers used the word for the hollow tube itself, while the darts it fired were called "dardos" or "flechas." The blowgun was known across the Americas and parts of Southeast Asia, and European travellers met it among Indigenous peoples in both regions. The Spanish term was applied to these weapons, which is how a word with Arabic and Persian roots came to name an object used by peoples far from the Mediterranean.