Talk:gun

RE: "2.To speed something up. He gunned the engine up" Isn't the 'up' on the end of the usage sentence redundant? He sped up the engine up? Gunned means SPED UP. bbrownw 23 October 2010

I have never heard of "gunning up"...he gunned the engine. —Stephen (Talk) 07:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. It should be just as you say, "He gunned the engine". I'll make the change.

bBrownw 22:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that as a definition the military one is generally correct although I don't remember the exact number. 30 calibers should be in the ballpark. An eight inch cannon would need to have a barrel length of 240" or 20 feet to be 30 calibers. bbrownw 23 October 2010

Sorry but I think that translation "(military) a cannon with tube length 30 calibers or more" are in general incorrect, but I'm not sure. Can someone verify this? Thanks. --Maltrobat 15:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

In Spanish, "arma de fuego f., pistola f" is not the correct translation for acception 2. I change it.--88.23.1.14 17:27, 23 November 2010 (UTC) Slovene and Italy are probably also incorrect. Can someone check it?--88.23.1.14 17:29, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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RFV-sense. Tagged (with the wrong template) and not listed. "(Australia, slang) Very good or skilful." - -sche (discuss) 18:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

RFV-failed for now. Might be citable if someone knew where to look. - -sche (discuss) 07:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Old Norse (etymology question)

Moved from article page to the right place

There's one question about Etymology that bothers me all the time. As I study Norse Mythology, I'm always trying to see the influence of the Vikings mythology and linguistics on the English Etymology. Here's the point: Many words that denote war phenomena and things related to the war (as well as the word war itself) come from Old Norse. But I'm particularly interested in the word gun that actually makes things too complicated for me. What was the process of word formation and how did the meaning of gun was rendered from the woman's name Gunnhildr? — This unsigned comment was added by Kimwellsball (talk • contribs) at 12:36, 23 January 2018.

Missing obsolete verb sense: to steal?

I stumbled upon this "mention" while investigating another sense. The person referred to was a former prisoner. Equinox ◑ 18:30, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

• 1869, Temple Bar (volume 25, page 213)

  […] he did not like fruit-selling, and returned to his old trade of “gunsmith,” gunning being the slang term for thieving, […]

Finance: gunning a stock

This appears in some old dictionaries, though uses are hard to find. The Investor's Catechism (1909, Marcus Mathias Reynolds, page 64) says that gunning a stock is "[t]o use every artifice to produce a 'break' when it is known that a certain house is heavily supplied with certain stock or stocks and would be unable to resist an attack". Equinox ◑ 19:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)