smoothbore
- adjective
- /ˈsmuːðbɔːr/
- Specialized
:
liso
- In the history of firearms, the smoothbore design was essential before the advent of rifling.
- smoothbore musket
- smoothbore barrel
Examples
-
Chingachgook slips through young trees and stops, shouldering his smoothbore musket.
Fiction book (1992) -
It's what they call a smoothbore weapon.
-
The first guns in the American colonies were smoothbore matchlocks brought from Europe.
Academic text (2007) -
Virtually every sporting firearm has the military heritage you mention, all the way back to the times when the flintlock deer rifle (actually smoothbore, most likely) was the fighting weapon too.
Blog text (18) -
And they were murderously effective when using those skills in war—much more so than their Euro-American counterparts—whether wielding a smoothbore musket, rifle, bow, or blade.
Academic text (2014) -
The old soldier proudly displayed his antique smoothbore musket, which had once seen battle.
-
Hunters often prefer smoothbore shotguns for shooting birds due to their wide shot spread.
Synonyms
1
9.5
A gun barrel with no spiral cuts inside to make bullets spin
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Smoothbore comes from the simple parts smooth and bore, where smooth means 'without roughness' and bore means 'a hole or tube'. So a smoothbore gun is one with a barrel that is 'smooth' inside, with no grooves to make the shot spin, which helps explain why it is less accurate at long distances.