Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Field Gun |
Field GunNoun1. Artillery (other than antiaircraft) used by armies in the field (especially for direct support of front-line troops). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Synonym: Field GunSynonym: field artillery (n). (additional references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Originally the term referred to smaller cannons that could be carried into combat by a moving field army, and moved about the field of battle. This was as opposed to siege cannon or mortars which were too large to be moved quickly, and would be used only in a prolonged siege.
Perhaps the most famous use of the field gun in terms of advanced tactics was Napoleon's use of very large wheels on the guns that allowed them to be moved quickly even during a battle. By moving the guns from point to point during the battle, enemy formations that were massing could be broken up to be handled by the infantry. The guns would then be moved to the next hot spot in the battle, dramtically increasing its firepower at any one point in time.
As the evolution of artillery continued, almost all guns of any size became capable of being moved at some speed. With few exceptions, even the largest siege weapons had become mobile by road or rail by the start of World War I, and evolution after that point tended to be towards smaller weapons with increased mobility. Although the Germans fielded a number of super-heavy guns (for no apparent good reason) in World War II, even these were rail or caterpiller-track mobile.
Thus since about the start of WWII the term has been applied to long-range artillery that fire at a low angle, as opposed to howitzers which tend to fire at higher angles. By the later stages of WWII almost all artillery was in the form of howizers of 105mm to 155mm, and the only common field gun of the era was the US 155mm Long Tom (a development of a French WWI weapon). The US Army tried the long-range gun again in the 1960s with a 175mm gun, but this was a failure, and after a rash of cracked barrels the gun was removed from service.
Today the gun finds itself in an area that seems to be gone for good. The class of small and highly mobile artillery has been filled with increasing capacity by the man-portable mortar, which replaced almost every artillery piece smaller than 105mm. Howitzers fill the middle ground, with the world rapidly standardizing on the 155mm NATO or 152mm fUSSR standards. The need for a long range weapon is filled by rocket artillery, or aircraft.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Field gun."
Crosswords: Field Gun |
| English words defined with "field gun": Amusette ♦ Fieldpiece. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "field gun": assembly hand ♦ Barbette , en barbette ♦ ELECTRIC-MOTOR ASSEMBLER ♦ FIELD ARTILLERY CREWMEMBER ♦ GUN-PERFORATOR LOADER ♦ immersed gun ♦ LIGHT AIR DEFENSE ARTILLERY CREWMEMBER ♦ OIL-FIELD EQUIPMENT MECHANIC ♦ SWIMMING POOL INSTALLER-AND-SERVICER. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Maxim Firing Field Gun (1897) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Pose on a field gun, holding their swords, while visiting Battery "Bee" on Sullivan's Island, Charleston harbor, South Carolina, in 1865. Photographed by the Matthew Brady organization.Credit: NAVY. |  | Unknown location. 6-pdr. field gun, model 1841.Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | India in the war. Indian soldiers in action before the capture of Keren. This gun hurled approximately 24,000 shells a day. Note the shadow of camouflage on the field gun.Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Field gun put up on the "green" to spur on volunteering for the army. Bristol, Vermont.Credit: Library of Congress. |
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 |
field gun top | 6 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "field gun"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | top (ball, bolt, cannon, falconet, gun, knob, nub, nubble, nugget, piece, soundly). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | مدفع الميدان. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | полско оръдие. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | kanón (cannon, gun). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | canon de campagne. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | tábori ágyú. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 野 (field artillery). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | やほう (field artillery). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | gunney magheragh. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | ieldfay ungay полевая пушка (field-gun). (various references) poljski top. (various references) fältkanon. (various references) sahra topu. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Field Gun" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: fieldgun. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: ingulfed. | |
| Words within the letters "d-e-f-g-i-l-n-u" | |
-1 letter: dueling, eluding, feuding, fueling, indulge. | |
-2 letters: dingle, engild, engulf, feuing, fugled, fulgid, guiled, gulden, gulfed, ingulf, lunged. | |
-3 letters: deign, dinge, elfin, feign, felid, fidge, field, fiend, filed, fined, flied, fling, flued, fluid, flung, fudge, fugle, fundi, fungi, gelid, glide, glued, guide, guild, guile, indue, ingle, lined, luged, lunge, lungi, nudge, nudie, unfed, unled. | |
| Words containing the letters "d-e-f-g-i-l-n-u" | |
+2 letters: befuddling, defaulting. | |
+3 letters: desulfuring, feudalizing, floundering, unfeignedly. | |
+4 letters: lifeguarding. | |
+5 letters: desulfurizing. | |
| 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)46 69 65 6C 64 47 75 6E |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000110 01101001 01100101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01000111 01110101 01101110 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)F i e l d   G u n |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0046 0069 0065 006C 0064 0047 0075 006E |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)40757178702418780 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Anagrams 12. Orthography | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
