different between gunfire vs dismast

English

Etymology

From gun +? fire.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???nf???/

Noun

gunfire (usually uncountable, plural gunfires)

1. Shots from a gun or guns, typically creating loud report.

   Let's hide in the trees to avoid the gunfire.

   Sergeant, direct your gunfire toward that copse of trees.

2. (chiefly military) The use of gunpowder-type weapons, mainly cannon, as opposed to swords or bayonets.

   Killing people became much easier and faster once armies started using gunfire.

3. (military) The time of firing of the morning gun or the evening gun.
4. (army slang) Tea, a cup of tea, especially one served early in the morning before first parade.
   • 1937, David Jones, In Parenthesis, I:

     They had only in them the rolled mattresses, the neatly piled bed-boards and the empty tea-buckets of the orderly-men, empied of their last gun-fire.

Related terms

• gunnery
• gunpowder
• gunshot
• gunshy or gun-shy

Translations

Anagrams

• ungrief

English

Etymology

dis- +? mast

Verb

dismast (third-person singular simple present dismasts, present participle dismasting, simple past and past participle dismasted)

1. (transitive, nautical) to break off the mast (of a ship), especially by gunfire.

Translations