The development of the hand culverin and matchlock arquebus brought about the use of cast lead balls as projectiles. "Bullet" is derived from the French word "boulette" which roughly means "little ball". The original musket bullet was a spherical lead ball two sizes smaller than the bore, wrapped in a loosely fitting paper patch which formed a tight seal so the full pressure of the expanding gas would propel the bullet. The loading was, therefore, easy with the old smooth-bore Brown Bess and similar military muskets. The original muzzle-loading rifle, on the other hand, with a more closely fitting ball to take the rifling grooves, was loaded with difficulty, particularly when the bore of the barrel was dirty from previous firings ("foul"). For this reason, early rifles were not generally used for military purposes. Early rifle bullets still used cloth patches to grip the rifling grooves.

That's interesting, Wink.

How did it go from a "boule" to a "boulette?"

(I'm sort of envisioning a Monty Python kind of thing with the English and French, with the French guys taunting the English about their "little girlie balls" or "petites filles boulettes," or some such. Maybe they didn't get the joke.)

quote:

Originally posted by Ricochet:
That's interesting, Wink.

How did it go from a "boule" to a "boulette?"

(I'm sort of envisioning a Monty Python kind of thing with the English and French, with the French guys taunting the English about their "little girlie balls" or "petites filles boulettes," or some such. Maybe they didn't get the joke.)

John, Nice to see your light side. Good looking new avtar by the way. Now where did Avtar come from? roger

I grabbed the Nair instead of the Wildroot last Saturday morning, Roger.

read somewhere online that even just light spiral scratching in a muzzle loader bore will stabilize the ball.

quote:

Now where did Avatar come from

from Sanskrit avatarana "descent"

Since I am sure you all know the "ette" suffix in French indicates the diminutive version: char and charette, fille and fillette, mesure and mesurette, etc. It is pretty obvious that when Snidely Whiplash is talking to Dudley DooWright these things get lost in translation.

Wink,

Thanks for the enlightenment. Never made the connection before.

Don

I guess that .44 Walker boulette that bounced back off a railroad tie and whacked me in the shin a couple weeks ago was a ricochette. Didn't break any skin.

quote:

Originally posted by Wink:
Since I am sure you all know the "ette" suffix in French indicates the diminutive version: char and charette, fille and fillette, mesure and mesurette, etc. It is pretty obvious that when Snidely Whiplash is talking to Dudley DooWright these things get lost in translation.

I've never figured out why the French are so snooty about their language. When you ask a German about President Kennedy's speech where he proudly proclaimed that he was a Jelly Doughnut (Ich bin EIN Berliner) they just smile and say they knew what he meant. A Frenchman would argue about which side of his nose the correct pronunciation should come from.
Unfortunately since the Normans managed to conquer England by fortunately invading at the same time some Vikings did, our Language is infected with entirely too much Norman (which was really a lot different from the "French" of the day). Fortunately for us we have plenty of other words from other languages too. I think I'll just start calling them "Projectiles"................................ ........................DJ

French have a law that forces to use french language, so, many words have been created to avoid foreigner words (mainly in English). Hard disk become "disc dur", software "logiciel", byte "octet", ABS "freins anti-blocage" etc. When they come in Italy, and they request for an information, they almost always start to speak French without even asking "excuse me, do you speak French?"; they are abroad, but they don't care; furthermore, they get offended if one can't speak their language!

Don't get me wrong Wink, I like France, I have several friends over there, and I hunt and practice shooting in Nice inland.

I'm glad the french have the language guarding law. All languages develop and change over time, but the acceleratting descent of English into a cesspool of slang does bum me out.

It is nice to have at least one "touch stone" available as a reference.

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:

quote:

Originally posted by Wink:
Since I am sure you all know the "ette" suffix in French indicates the diminutive version: char and charette, fille and fillette, mesure and mesurette, etc. It is pretty obvious that when Snidely Whiplash is talking to Dudley DooWright these things get lost in translation.

I've never figured out why the French are so snooty about their language. When you ask a German about President Kennedy's speech where he proudly proclaimed that he was a Jelly Doughnut (Ich bin EIN Berliner) they just smile and say they knew what he meant. A Frenchman would argue about which side of his nose the correct pronunciation should come from.
Unfortunately since the Normans managed to conquer England by fortunately invading at the same time some Vikings did, our Language is infected with entirely too much Norman (which was really a lot different from the "French" of the day). Fortunately for us we have plenty of other words from other languages too. I think I'll just start calling them "Projectiles"................................ ........................DJ

Uhhh.... actually the Normans were also Vikings
they just came to england via france.

the simple fact that the Normans were from Normandie and the root of Norman is "Nor Men" a contraction of "Norse Men", meaning Norwegian, aka "Vikings".

Kinda the same way "russian" doesn't mean what most people think it does...


"Russian" is a contraction of "Russ" which means "Red" refering to the color of their hair
and refered to the ruling invaders from Sweden.
When the Norwegians and Danes were heading southwest the swedes were going southeast.

so talking about invasions of england by "Vikings", "Normans" "Celts" or "Scots"
is at best arguing over WHICH viking invasion
and where the invaders TEMPORARILY resided before invading england... is all pretty much moot because at the heart of the matter they were ALL "Vikings", some simply came to england by more circuitous routes.

Yet by some sad quirk anglo cooking survived...

BTW, the "saxon" part of "Anglo-Saxon"?
the Saxons came from what is now Germany
(south eastern germany to be specific)
and thus our language has FAR more influence from the language now known as "german" than it does from the French language.

"Old english" is most closely related to german
"middle English" as developed after the Norman Conquest carried SOME french influenceBut even more Norwegian as the nromans themselves had radically changed french as much as they did france.



AllanD

Since the topic of words and weapons origins amuses us all, let it be known that it was in the French town of Bayonne that long pointy objects were first placed on the end of muskets, hence the term "bayonette".

quote:

Originally posted by wildboar:


Don't get me wrong Wink, I like France, I have several friends over there, and I hunt and practice shooting in Nice inland.

No offense taken. Even within France certain groups, notably Parisians, are noted for their lack of sensitivity when away from their normal stomping grounds. In the South of France I think you are better off with a rented car than a car with Paris licence plates. Locals will treat you better in a traffic jam.

quote:

so talking about invasions of england by "Vikings", "Normans" "Celts" or "Scots" is at best arguing over WHICH viking invasion

There was an interesting show on BBC the other night, highlighting recent insights into the migrations, using DNA testing on the modern British population.

1) The Celts, et al., appear to have been the original settlers after the Ice Age, kind of the Aboriginals, if you will.

2) The Angle-Saxons, who were from what is now northern Germany, pushed the Celts, et al. toward the west coast. Anyone who has studied German will find that the core English language is very much related to modern German. Often, the simple, everyday, single-syllable words are Germanic. The multi-syllable words come from Latin, via French and the Normans.

3) The Danish "vikings" are not the same stock as the Norwegian "vikings." The Danes are genetically close to the Angle-Saxons. The Norwegians are a different lot. Both were from the northern regions, and got lumped together as "north men." Norman "vikings" were from Denmark, not Norway.

4) The Norwegian "vikings" overran the islands north of Scotland, displacing the Picts, a Celtic people.

quote:

Originally posted by Allan DeGroot:

BTW, the "saxon" part of "Anglo-Saxon"?
the Saxons came from what is now Germany
(south eastern germany to be specific)
and thus our language has FAR more influence from the language now known as "german" than it does from the French language.

AllanD

Sachisch the dialect they speak in Saxony now is to German what Cajun is to English. It's so hard to understand that they put subtitles on High-German so normal German's can tell what the heck the people in Zwickau and Dresden are saying! Try and get them to pronounce a "p", it can be funny.

English is a huge language that has accummulated thousands of words from many different languages i.e. karioke, Sabots, Eggs, Angst, from Japanese, French, Scandanavia, German etc. Where all the influences come from is an interesting discusssion but probably too long to get into here.....................DJ