MUSKET (Fr. mousquet, Ger. Muskete, &c.)  , the term generally applied to the firearm of the infantry soldier from about 1550 up to and even beyond the universal adoption of rifled small arms about 1850-186o . The word originally signified a male sparrowhawk (Italian moschetto, derived perhaps ultimately from Latin musca, a fly) and its application to the weapon may be explained by the practice of naming firearms after birds and beasts (cf. falcon, basilisk) . Strictly speaking, the word is inapplicable both to the early hand-guns and to the arquebuses and calivers that superseded the hand-guns . The " musket " proper, introduced into the Spanish army by the duke of Alva, was much heavier and more powerful than the arquebus . Its bullet retained sufficient striking energy to stop a horse at 500 and 600 yards from the muzzle . A writer in 1598 (quoted s.v. in the New English Dictionary) goes so far as to say that " One good musket may be accounted for two callivers." Unlike the arquebus, it was fired from a rest, which the " musketeer " stuck into the ground in front of him . But during the 17th century the musket in use was so far improved that the rest could be dispensed with (see Gux) . The musket was a matchlock, weapons with other forms of lock being distinguished as wheel-locks, firelocks, snaphances, &c., and soldiers were similarly distinguished as musketeers and fusiliers . On the disuse, about 1690-1695, of this form of firing mechanism, the term " musket " was, in France at least, for a time discontinued in favour of " fusil," or flint-lock, which thenceforward reigned supreme up to the introduction of a practicable percussion lock about ' 1830—1840 . But the term " musket " survived the thing it originally represented, and was currently used for the firelock (and afterwards for the percussion weapon) . To-day it is generically used for military firearms anterior to the modern rifle . The original meaning of the word musketry has remained almost unaltered since 1600; it signifies the fire of infantry small-arms (though for this " rifle fire " is now a far more usual term), and in particular the art of using them (see INFANTRY and RIFLE) .

Of the derivatives, the only one that is not self-explanatory is musketoon . This was a

short, large-bore musket somewhat of the blunderbuss type, originally designed for the use of cavalry, but afterwards, in the 18th century, chiefly a domestic or coachman's weapon .