Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Guns.



Fun facts. According to the OED, the word gun originates from the name of a famous siege weapon, the "Lady Gunnhildr". It appears in Middle English as gonne.

There is at least one known example of a particular siege engine named Gunnhildr. Word Origins observes that

A 1330 munitions list from Windsor Castle reads:
Una magna balista de cornu quae vocatur Domina Gunilda. (A large ballista from Cornwall called Lady Gunilda. [snip])

Variations on the general word gun appear in English records written in Latin starting in 1339. The first recorded use of of the word, gonne, in English is in 1384 by Chaucer.

I am curious about other terms for firearms now in other languages.

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