RICOCHET • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Ricochet

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/rˈɪkəʃˌeɪ/ Listen

noun

Ricochet n.

A rebound or skipping, as of a bullet bouncing off a hard surface, or off the ground when a gun is fired at a low angle of elevation, or of a flat stone thrown along the surface of water.

A peculiar gait used by certain animals such as the kangaroo who move by a type of bouncing motion. "Kangaroos and wallabies (macropodids) as well as kangaroo mice and jerboas, locate themselves differently, though, and do not use the forelimbs at all in their distinctive modus locatus, to which Muybridge applied the term "ricochet",..."

Ricochet firing (Mil.), the firing of guns or howitzers, usually with small charges, at an elevation of only a few degrees, so as to cause the balls or shells to bound or skip along the ground.

verb

Ricochet v. t. (past & past part. ricocheted or ricochetted; pres. part. ricocheting or ricochetting) To operate upon by ricochet firing. See Ricochet, n. (R.)

Ricochet v. i. (past & past part. ricocheted or ricochetted; pres. part. ricocheting or ricochetting) To skip with a rebound or rebounds, as a flat stone on the surface of water, or a cannon ball on the ground. See Ricochet, n.

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Etymology of 'Ricochet'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ricochet" Quotes from Famous Books

... flying off or breaking of a wheel. What can be more palpably absurd or ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's Ricochet Rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum. We trust that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed ...

— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... true outside of Wagner it is easy to conceive how intensified the situation was within its narrow limits towards which every hostile gun was pointed. The sand came down in avalanches; huge vertical shells and those rolled over by the ricochet shots from the ships, buried themselves and then exploded, rending the earth and forming great craters, out of which the sand and iron fragments flew high in the air. It was a fierce sirocco freighted with iron as well as sand. The sand flew over from the seashore, from the glacis, from the ...

— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... enigma, I found the power became more strong when curbed. Consequently, the gun that would before have carried fifteen miles, may send twenty, and the ball, if not explosible, might ricochet three." ...

— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... pink-eyed recruities gets away from my 'Mind ye now,' an' 'Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,'—sure I am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin'. So I tache, as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be good to me, for I ...

— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... monument erected to the memory of a captain who was accidentally shot. It appears his company, which he was in charge of at the time, had completed their firing and were returning to camp by a circuitous route. Other corps were firing at the time, when a ricochet bullet struck the captain and ...

— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle

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