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Glite Dictionary
4️⃣ The number 45 🔫 A handgun
forty-five

forty-five

1 7.9
A gun that fires .45 bullets and is held in one hand
  • noun
  • /ˈfɔrti faɪv/
  • US
translation icon : pistola calibre .45
  • - One forty-five last time out, sir.

Examples

  • But when Larry looked out the window and saw a car instead of a truck, he put his shirt back on and, leaving it unbuttoned, went to the door with his forty-five.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • A forty-five.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Uh, yeah, I need a nine, maybe a forty-five.

    The Lucky Man (2018)

  • "How many you got left in that forty-five?" "Four." "I've got two in the thirty-eight."

    Fiction book (2001)

  • You're charged in a triple homicide; you're walking around with a forty-five?

    Fiction book (1997)

  • "Nine men lay dead or at death's door yesterday noon "following a gunfight between Lincoln resident Henry Hill, forty-five, "and what patrons have called "the Kid'.

    Young Guns (1988)

  • And I take requests, got a sign over the Wurlitzer, so I find myself sorting through those boxes of forty-fives looking for something that I'm pretty sure I should have even though I've never actually seen it.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Limits my selection a bit, but the kind of crowd I draw has a certain collective taste, and the guy who sold me the juke threw in about twelve hundred forty-fives that he'd been collecting since 1956.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • When Duncan was a man of forty-five, his Majesty sent the Forty-second Highlanders to serve under General James Abercromby to take a colonial fortification, Fort Carillon, from the French.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The detective pulled out his forty-five to ensure he was prepared for any danger.

Surface Forms

forty-five singular
forty-fives plural

Morphology

forty-five = forty + five (semi-transparent) = forty + five

Formally composed of 'forty' + 'five', but the sense 'a .45-caliber pistol' is a specialized, lexicalized use that requires cultural or register knowledge.

Etymology

Forty-five for a gun comes from the number .45, which shows the bullet size and means 'a little less than half an inch', so a pistol that fires those bullets is called a forty-five.