Also smoothbore, smooth bore. [f. SMOOTH a. + BORE sb.1]
1. A cannon or gun of which the barrel is made with a smooth or unrifled bore.
In first quot. with punning allusion to BORE sb.2
1848. Lowell, Fable for Critics, 1229. I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles Into two great divisions…;—There’s your smooth-bore and screw-bore [etc.].
1859. ‘Stonehenge,’ Shot Gun, 306. A ball from a smooth bore (that is, from a barrel not rifled in any way).
1897. Gen. H. Porter, in Century Mag., Aug., 587/1. One ironclad, the Onondaga, a powerful double-turreted monitor carrying two 15-inch smooth-bores and two 150-pound Parrott rifles.
fig. 1883. J. Payn, Thicker than Water, xxiii. One thought expelling another in the narrow smoothbore of her mind.
2. attrib. a. Having a smooth or unrifled bore.
1859. Musketry Instr., 31. During the passage of the spherical ball through the smooth-bore barrel.
1860. Tennent, Story Guns (1864), 228. These trials were made with the old smooth-bore cannon.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 65/1. For many years the arm of the British soldier was a smooth-bore musket, familiarly known as ‘Brown Bess.’
b. Adapted for guns having a smooth bore.
1859. F. A. Griffiths, Artill. Man. (1862), 203. Smooth-bore projectiles.
Hence Smooth-bored a., = prec. 2 a.
1859. F. A. Griffiths, Artill. Man. (1862), 203. Smooth-bored guns.
1890. Capt. Noble, in Nature, 18 Sept., 502/2. At short distances … the smooth-bored guns were reasonably accurate.
