Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Bazooka |
BazookaNoun1. A portable rocket launcher used by infantrymen as an anti-tank weapon. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "bazooka" was first used: 1942. (references) |
Crosswords: Bazooka |
| Specialty definitions using "bazooka": shaped charge. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Bazooka" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Dutch (anti-tank gun, bazooka), French (anti-tank gun, bazooka), German (bazooka), Italian (bazooka). |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The bazooka is a folk musical instrument, a rather primitive version of a trombone, usually with a lower but less wide range. From the mouthpiece the air chamber goes into wide lengths of pipe of sizes so that the wider diameter pipe can slide around the narrower one, lenghtening or shortening the instrument to change the pitch. The bazooka was popularized in the 1930s by radio comedian Bob Burns, who may have invented the instrument some 20 years earlier. The bazooka was also played by jazz musician Noone Johnson.
The bazooka has sometimes been confused with a different novelty instrument, the kazoo; kazoos have sometimes been refered to as "bazookas", especially in British English.
The bazooka weapon was one of the first anti-tank weapons based on the HEAT shell to enter service, used by the United States Armed Forces in World War II. It was nicknamed a "bazooka" from a vague resemblance to the musical instrument. It was highly effective, so much so that the Germans copied it outright to produce their own version known as the Panzerschreck. The bazooka could be found in all theatres of war during World War II, and was used until the Korean War when it was then replaced by newer weapons such as the LAW in time for the Vietnam War.
Prior to the war the US Army had developed a shaped-charge hand grenade for anti-tank use that was effective at defeating up to 100mm of armor, by far the best such weapon in the world at the time. However it remained very difficult to use, requiring it to be placed directly on the tank, and for this reason it was largely ignored.
Things changed when Colonel Skinner suggested placing the grenade on the front of his experimental rocket launcher, which was a weapon looking for a role. This proved to be a good match, and by late 1942 the Rocket Launcher, M1A1 was introduced. This consisted of a long (4ft) tube with a simple wooden stock and sights, into which the 60mm rocket grenades were inserted at the rear. A small battery provided a charge to ignite the rocket when the trigger was pulled. The main drawback to the weapon was the large backblast and smoke trail which gave away the position of the shooter.
In 1944 the M1A1 model was supplemented by the improved M9 and then the M9A1 which could be broken into two halves for easier carrying. A larger 3.5lb warhead was under development, but didn't reach service until after the war had ended. By the time of the Korean War an even larger M20 with a 2lb 3.5" warhead was starting to enter service, which could penetrate well over 200mm of armor and had an extended range of about 150m.
After World War II, a United States brand of bubble gum was marketed under the name Bazooka, with small comic strips packaged with the gum, featuring the character "Bazooka Joe".
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Bazooka."
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Caught a bazooka round at Little Big Horn. (Hot Shots!; writing credit: Jim Abrahams; Pat Proft) Sweetie, get mommy's bazooka. (Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker; writing credit: Bob Kane; Paul Dini) Dude, you have a bazooka. Stop thinking Prague Police and start thinking Playstation. (XXX; writing credit: Rich Wilkes) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Bazooka County 5: The Jugs (1993) Hanappe Bazooka (1992) Bazooka County 4 (1991) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books | |||
High Tech |
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Consumer Goods | |||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Bazooka" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 71.43% of the time. "Bazooka" is used about 14 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 71.43% | 10 | 111,207 |
| Noun (proper) | 28.57% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Total | 100.00% | 14 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "bazooka": anti-bazooka. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
bazooka | 450 |
bazooka tube | 46 |
bazooka bubble gum | 35 |
bazooka joe | 30 |
bazooka speaker | 28 |
bazooka sub woofer | 27 |
bazooka gum | 25 |
bazooka subwoofers | 18 |
bazooka sub | 16 |
air bazooka | 15 |
sas bazooka | 13 |
bazooka audio | 13 |
bazooka car audio | 13 |
bazooka amplifier | 11 |
bazooka jules | 11 |
bazooka driver | 10 |
bazooka club golf | 10 |
bazooka el1500 | 10 |
antenna bazooka | 9 |
bazooka edge tour | 9 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "bazooka"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 火箭'. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | pancéřová pìst. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | bazooka (anti-tank gun), antitankgeweer (anti-tank gun). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | bazuko (anti-tank gun). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | raketinheitin (rocket launcher). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | bazooka. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | panzerfaust, Panzerbüchse. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | μπαζούκα. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | בזוק". (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | páncélököl (anti-tank gun). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | bazooka. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | バズーカ (bachelor, battered child, butter, butter sauce, buttercream, butterfly, buzz session, clattering noise, flapping, rattling, thud, Vatican), バス発着 (buzz, depot). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | バズーカほう, バズーカ . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | "주카포. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | azookabay bazuca. (various references) реактивный противотанковый гранатомет 'базука', противотанковый гранатомет. (various references) bazuka, ručni bacač. (various references) bazuca. (various references) raketgevär (rocket launcher). (various references) ปืนยิงรถถัง. (various references) bazuka, roketatar (rocket launcher). (various references) реактивний протитанковий гранатомет. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Dutch | 700-Modern | bazuin. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "bazooka": bazookas. (additional references) | |
| |
"Bazooka" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Absaroke, Bakovka, bazoca, bazooki, bazouki, bazzooka, bazzooki, Jajouka, Razuki, Wazoua. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "bazooka" (pronounced buzuw"ku) |
| 3 | -uw" k u | Sambuca. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-b-k-o-o-z" | |
-2 letters: bazoo, kazoo. | |
-3 letters: book, bozo, kobo. | |
-4 letters: aba, abo, azo, baa, boa, boo, kab, koa, kob, oak, oka, zoa, zoo. | |
-5 letters: aa, ab, ba, bo, ka. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-b-k-o-o-z" | |
+1 letter: bazookas. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 61 7A 6F 6F 6B 61 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-... .- --.. --- --- -.- .- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01100001 01111010 01101111 01101111 01101011 01100001 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B a z o o k a |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 0061 007A 006F 006F 006B 0061 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)36679281817767 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Translations: Ancient 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Orthography 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
