rifle ball
- noun
- /ˈraɪfəl bɔl/
- Archaic
:
balín
- Most of the fighting took place at a distance of 100 yards or so, and rifle balls caused nearly all the damage.
Examples
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The soldier was hit by a rifle ball during the battle, which severely injured his leg.
-
In historical reenactments, actors often use replicas of rifle balls to accurately portray battles.
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WITH A GUN LIKE THIS, A MAN COULD PUT A RIFLE BALL THROUGH THE MOON.
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"Now the supporters of the aetherial theory," Thomson wrote, "do not deny that electrified particles are shot off from the cathode; they deny, however, that these charged particles have any more to do with the cathode rays than a rifle ball has with the flash when a rifle is fired."
Academic text (1997) -
After the war, he kept a rifle ball as a reminder of the fierce combat he endured.
Synonyms
∞
2.2
A small metal object fired from a gun
63
8.6
A solid round bullet used in old guns
How Round
- Archaic
- Specialized
1
6.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a bullet designed to be fired from a rifle' is directly derivable from combining 'rifle' (a firearm) with 'ball' (a shot or projectile); a learner who knows both words will readily infer it refers to the projectile used in a rifle. This follows a straightforward noun+noun compositional pattern common across languages, so the expression is transparently interpretable.
Etymology
Rifle ball comes from the old practice of using a round metal ball as the shot for a rifle. Soldiers loaded the round ball into the barrel and fired it, so the name came to mean 'a bullet for a rifle', even after bullets were later made longer.