Reference
Glossary
A quick guide to some of the more commoon terms you will encounter on this site.
- Bayonet
- A blade fixed to the muzzle of the rifle for close-quarters fighting.
- Black powder
- The older gunpowder of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre, giving a large muzzle flash and dense white smoke.
- Bolt action
- A manually operated repeating action worked by lifting, drawing back and pushing home a bolt handle, which chambers a round and cocks the striker.
- Calibre
- The internal diameter of the bore, and by extension the size of cartridge a firearm is chambered for.
- Carbine
- A shorter, lighter version of a service rifle, usually issued to cavalry, artillery and engineers.
- Cartridge
- The complete round: case, primer, powder charge and bullet.
- Chamber
- The rear section of the barrel shaped to hold a single cartridge at the moment of firing.
- Charger
- A stripper clip: a thin metal strip or clip that charges the magazine from the top and is then discarded.
- En-bloc clip
- A metal clip loaded with cartridges that is inserted whole into the magazine and drops out when the last round is fired
- Gewehr
- German for “rifle” — abbreviated Gew., as in the Gewehr 98.
- Magazine
- The part of the rifle that holds the cartridges ready to be fed into the chamber.
- Receiver
- The central body of the rifle that houses the bolt and locking lugs and to which the barrel and stock attach.
- Rifling
- The spiral grooves cut into the bore that spin the bullet to stabilise it in flight.
- Smokeless powder
- A nitrocellulose propellant that burns with little smoke, replacing black powder from the late 1880s and enabling smaller, faster cartridges.
- Straight-pull
- A bolt worked by pulling straight back and pushing forward without rotating the handle, as on the Austro-Hungarian Mannlicher M95 and the Swiss Schmidt-Rubin.
- Stripper clip
- A thin metal strip holding a row of cartridges, used to charge the magazine from the top and then discarded. Also called a charger.