Dictionary

armrack en · NOUN

Etymology

From arm + rack.

Meanings

1. A frame, generally vertical, for holding small arms.
   • 1803, General Standing Orders for Third, or Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards, Edinburgh: R. Allan, Instructions for the Guard, Article 16, pp. 162-163, The Carbines must be regularly place in the arm rack, according to each man’s number in the Guard.
   • [The carbines] disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were opened they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. 1890 May 17, Rudyard Kipling, “The Man Who Was”, in Littel’s Living Age, volume 185, number 2394, page 443:
   • It was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall. 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 40, in Lord Jim, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 403:

Forms