gun
/ɡʌn
/- The Warrior adapts to a range of roles with weapon fits ranging from machine pistols to 90 mm guns, mortars and missile systems.
- Another major difference is the shift from guns to missiles as the primary weapon.
Synonyms
- Irrigation is available from a borehole and water is applied with a rain gun as required.
- At a public hearing last week, speakers against the proposal outnumbered the supporters and criticized the use of traps and bolt guns as cruel.
- We continue this Thurs evening, Nov 20, with a further portrait session, this time using members' own flash guns.
- The tinkle of the bell as the door opens pistols me as though it were a starting gun.
- Once they reveal who's in, the starting gun cracks on the biggest American sweepstake, with every office of two people or more stashing a few bucks on one of the entrants.
- A normal royal gun salute is 21 guns, but that was increased to 41, because it was fired from a royal residence.
- Alighting from the plane at an air base near Islamabad, Zhu was received by Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf as 19 guns boomed to salute him.
- Omitting the first few isotopes in the decay series would be like removing the first few guns in our ‘salute’.
- Saturday brought out the men, and Bentson easily took first place by curling 85 pounds for 63 reps with his massive guns.
- Keep in mind that massive guns, huge pecs, and rock-hard delts are just some of the benefits of using these products in your program!
- Like new students of body-building, he is so focused on getting big guns and eye-popping pecs that he forgets all about his lower half.
- While we're talking about Syria, there is a report today that a Hamas leader in Damascus was gunned down, was killed.
- But we're not sure of the circumstances, whether they were - whether they were killed in the firefight or whether they were gunned down in some other kind of more devious ambush.
- If they did not ‘disappear’ it was because they had been gunned down in public or tortured and killed.
Synonyms
- He brakes once more, guns the engine a final time - and we race off across the roof of the Big Top, the floor dizzyingly far below, and come to a screaming stop, high above the ground on the far side.
- He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.
- Then he was back in the cockpit, gunning the engine, pointing the nose up and soaring over the telephone wires.
- ‘It is something like gunning a car constantly,’ she says.
- I couldn't get comfortable, the dreams were bad, my neighbor was gunning his motorcycle again.
- He had already gunned the little car; at once it lost traction on the gravel.
Phrases
be gunning for
big gun
go great guns
in the gun
jump the gun
stick to one's guns
top gun
under the gun
Derivatives
gunless
- Kahan and Braman argue that people on each side of the gun debate view the risks associated with guns differently: One fears being a victim of gun crime, while the other fears being a gunless victim.
Origin
Middle English gunne, gonne, perhaps from a pet form of the Scandinavian name Gunnhildr, from gunnr + hildr, both meaning 'war'.
The first device to be called a gun in English may have been a kind of catapult used in medieval warfare to hurl rocks or arrows at the enemy. It is possible that the term may have derived from a pet form of the Scandinavian name Gunnhildr (from gunnr and hildr, both meaning ‘war’). Giving female personal names to weapons has been a common practice over the centuries. Examples include Mons Meg, a 15th-century cannon in Edinburgh Castle; Brown Bess, the nickname for a musket used by the British army in the 18th century; and Big Bertha, a large German gun used in the First World War.
If someone refuses to compromise or change, we can say that they are sticking to their guns. This comes from the battlefield, where sticking to your guns meant remaining at your post despite being under constant bombardment. To be gunning for someone is to be looking for a chance to attack them. In the 17th century, though, to go gunning was to go hunting. Gunboat diplomacy is foreign policy supported by the use or threat of military force. It is first mentioned in the 1920s, in reference to US policy in China.