.38 caliber
3
7.9
- adjective
- /ˈθɜrtiˈeɪt ˈkælɪbər/
- Specialized
:
calibre .38
- The police recovered a .38 caliber handgun at the crime scene.
- .38 caliber revolver
- .38 caliber pistol
- .38 caliber handgun
Examples
-
In 1993, the boy's four-year-old sister accidentally shot and killed him with a loaded .38 caliber revolver that she had found in a bag on the floor of their parents' bedroom closet.
Blog text (14) -
He quickly searches his desk drawer, finding a .38 caliber pistol.
Fiction book (1999) -
Phil then picked up his .38 caliber pistol.
Fiction book (1998) -
Ray raises the .38 caliber handgun.
Fiction book (1998) -
George Johnson killed his wife with a similar .38 caliber revolver on 25 August 1910.
Academic text (1994) -
To his astonishment, he was staring down the barrel of a .38 caliber pistol.
Fiction book (1994) -
During a struggle with Shapiro, Collins shot the store owner with a .38 caliber revolver.
Academic text (1994) -
To be the best killer as your advisor, do not shoot first and foremost a cheap antique six-shooter or a .38 caliber.
Blog text (24) -
Where I get hazy, though, is the part where the cleaning woman shows up the next morning and finds your wife and her lover in bed, riddled with .38 caliber bullets.
Fiction book (1994) -
Five .38 caliber slugs ripped into the wooden packing crate that Johnny Cairo had crawled into only moments before.
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
2
7.9
Of a gun or bullet that has a barrel 0.38 inches wide
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
.38 + caliber
The phrase is a simple measurement compound: 'caliber' means the diameter of a gun barrel or bullet and '.38' is a numeric measurement (thirty-eight hundredths of an inch). Because the overall meaning is directly built from a number + a measurement noun — a cross-linguistically common and predictable pattern — a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it.
Etymology
.38 Caliber comes from a simple measurement: .38 means thirty-eight hundredths of an inch across the bullet or the inside of a gun barrel, and caliber means the gun's 'size'. So .38 caliber tells you the 'size' of the ammunition the gun uses.