Slitherine

This has been bugging me for some time. What is the correct way of saying.....

The archers loosed their arrows.
The archers shot their arrows.
The archers fired their arrows.

Aren't shot and fired both gun terms?

I'm certain someone on this forum can steer me the right direction.

It is difficult to unlearn or ignor that which we know. We know from TV that people shoot and fire a gun in the act of discharge, by pulling a triger. Xbows and early firearms had large triggers that you squeezed with your thum on the stock, and trigger most likely being squeezed by your four fingers.

The verb --- shoot --- , i believe, has Old English and Norse origins. It roughly means discharge in the context of an arrow being loosed as in your example. The command to discharge arrows may have been ---conjecture---
1 Archers - knights left - loose
2 Archers - knights left - discharge
3 Archers - knights left - shoot
All the above would achieve the command result that arrows be directed at the enemy knights to the Archer BG's left.

Archers may have inferred load; knights left - the target and its direction to the archers front. The last word in the command is to discharge and may have been shoot --- in its OE context.

Regards
Max

Shoot is germanic and long predates any kind of firearm. Fire is indeed a gunpowder neologism. Strange we don't have a french derivative (the french "throw" their arrows -> lancer from the same word in latin, and "pull" their guns -> tirer).

Putting it simply : you shoot a bow but fire a gun.

The one I'm not sure about though is when you want to say missile fire, as in: "the Greeks suffered a rain of missile fire from the Persian skirmishers"

"the Greeks suffered a rain of missile fire from the Persian skirmishers"

A rain/hail of arrows. Doesn't need anything else

I find it is usually 'the bastards missed AGAIN'.

Scrumpy wrote:I find it is usually 'the bastards missed AGAIN'.

I'll have to come play you one day Scrumpy. It's usually 'what do you mean you got 3 hits? You only roll 2 dice!!!" for me