bazooka

There are two definitions for “bazooka.” 

The Merriam Webster Dictionary says it’s “a tube-shaped, portable rocket launcher that fires a rocket capable of penetrating several inches of armor plate, as of a tank or other armored military vehicle.”

Wikipedia says the bazooka “is a brass musical instrument several feet in length which incorporates telescopic tubing like the trombone. Radio comedian Bob Burns is credited with inventing the instrument in the 1910s, and popularized it in the 1930s.”

The name “bazooka” comes from an extension of the word “bazoo,” which is slang for “mouth” or “boastful talk,” and which probably originated from the Dutch bazuin (trumpet). The name appears in the 1909 novel The Swoop, or how Clarence Saved England by P. G. Wodehouse, describing a musical instrument used in music halls.

It was not until World War II that “bazooka” was adopted as the universally applied nickname of a new anti-tank weapon, due to its vague resemblance to the musical instrument.

So the bazooka first of all produced music and then became a weapon of war. I’ve never heard a bazooka played, but depending on the sounds it makes, I might regard it as a weapon against my ear.

If you’d like the technical details of how the instrument is constructed and how it makes sounds, check out Wikipedia.