Quaker gun
- noun
- /ˈkwākər ɡən/
- Archaic
:
cañón de madera
- During the siege, the defenders positioned a Quaker gun on the wall to fool the enemy scouts.
Examples
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Civil War armies sometimes relied on Quaker guns when they lacked enough real artillery.
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The old log painted black served as a Quaker gun to deter any would-be attackers.
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The soldiers set up a Quaker gun to deceive the enemy.
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During the battle, they used a Quaker gun as a decoy.
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During the siege, the defenders positioned a Quaker gun on the wall to fool the enemy scouts.
-
The old log painted black served as a Quaker gun to deter any would-be attackers.
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Civil War armies sometimes relied on Quaker guns when they lacked enough real artillery.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Quaker + gun
The sense 'a fake or dummy cannon used to deceive' cannot be derived from the parts: 'gun' denotes a weapon but 'Quaker' is a cultural/proper name (and even if known as a pacifist group it does not imply 'fake'). This is a historical/idiomatic label that requires cultural or historical knowledge rather than compositional inference, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would not predict the meaning.
Etymology
Quaker gun comes from a Civil War trick: soldiers put a log painted black on a cart so it looked like a real gun but could not fire. People called it a 'Quaker' gun because Quakers are known for being peaceful and the fake 'gun' would not shoot, so today Quaker gun means any fake weapon used to fool the enemy.
