carbine

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French carabine (“small harquebus”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} also charabine,^[3] formed from carabin (“lightly armed cavalryman, mounted musketeer”),^[3][5][4][7] first the weapon of such a soldier.^[6][8] English first had the longer form carabine, and earlier carabin (1590) for the mounted musketeer.^[4][5][9] Weekley notes that the man may instead have been named after the weapon, as with dragoon.^[10] The origin of carabin is uncertain.^{[5][7][4][11]} One view traces it to Medieval Latin Calabrinus (“Calabrian”), the weapon being one made in Calabria,^[12][11][13] and Weekley and Skeat cite a variant, Old French calabrin, which Skeat glosses as a light-armed soldier.^[10][14] The OED reports Diez's view that calabrin was the soldier who worked the calabre (“an ancient engine of war”), the name being transferred to those who carried the new firearms, and Littré's preference for "Calabrian".^[9][4] Merriam-Webster, the American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com instead derive it, perhaps as a joke, from escarrabin (“gravedigger for plague victims”), an alteration of escharbot (“dung beetle”), from the base of Latin scarabaeus (“beetle”), the source of scarab;^{[3][15][2][16]} Barnhart suggests the gravediggers' black clothes as the link, while Etymonline finds this theory less likely and reports that the name was said to have been used of archers from Flanders.^[4][11] The French word passed into Italian carabina, Spanish carabina and Portuguese carabina.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A firearm shorter than the musket, used by cavalry: Merriam-Webster dates it to 1592,^[3] Etymonline to the 1580s, and the OED and Barnhart to 1605.^[11][17][4]

Semantic evolution

According to Hendrickson, the carabins of 16th-century England were large pistols with barrels about three feet long, lighter than muskets and used by light cavalry, and the spelling carbine was established by the early 17th century.^[13] Johnson (1755), who still listed the form carabine, described a firearm halfway between the pistol and the musket, with a barrel two and a half feet long, hung from a belt by the light horse.^[18] In the 19th century the word was used especially of a short rifle adapted for mounted troops.^[11] In the 20th century it came to mean a light automatic or semiautomatic military rifle of limited range, issued to troops who are not mainly riflemen.^[19][3] In American Western slang of the 1870s, to carbine someone was to cheat them.^[20]

Timeline

• 1592 – a short firearm used by cavalry.^[3] Etymonline dates it to the 1580s, and the OED to 1605.^[11][17]
• 1643 – compounds such as carbine-ball and carbine-shot.^[17]
• 1875 – US slang verb, to cheat.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A light rifle with a short barrel: He kept a carbine behind the saddle for snakes.^[3][19]
2. A light automatic or semiautomatic military rifle of limited range, using less powerful ammunition.^[19][3]
3. A short firearm formerly carried by cavalry, between the pistol and the musket in length.^{[3][19][5][17]}

Word family

• carbineer

Related words

• carabineer
• carabin
• scarab

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Onions, C. T., ed. (1966), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
16. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
17. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com