DERRINGER

Derringer

The term derringer is a genericized misspelling of the last name of Henry Deringer, a famous 19th-century maker of small pocket pistols. Many copies of the original Philadelphia Deringer pistol were made by other gun makers worldwide, and the name was often misspelled; this misspelling soon became an alternate generic term for any pocket pistol, along with the generic phrase palm pistol Deringer's competitors invented and used in their advertising. The original Deringer pistol was a single-shot muzzleloading pistol; with the advent of cartridge firearms, pistols began to be produced in the modern form still known as a derringer.

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derringer

Noun

  1. A type of very small, concealable pistol with one or two barrels, but without any loading system or magazine.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: derringer
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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