Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A member of a combat aircraft crew who operates the bombsight and drops the bombs.
  • noun Chiefly British A noncommissioned artillery officer.
  • noun Archaic A soldier in the artillery.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Properly, a soldier in charge of a bombard or cannon; specifically, in the British army, a non-commissioned officer of the Royal Artillery, ranking next below a corporal, whose duty it is to load shells, grenades, etc., and to fix the fuses, and who is particularly appointed to the service of mortars and howitzers.
  • noun A bombardier-beetle.
  • noun A name of a European frog, Bombinator igneus.
  • noun [capitalized] A former name, among the Portuguese, for a Fleming or other foreigner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Archaic One who used or managed a bombard; an artilleryman; a gunner.
  • noun A noncommissioned officer in the British artillery.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a kind of beetle (Brachinus crepitans), so called because, when disturbed, it makes an explosive discharge of a pungent and acrid vapor from its anal glands. The name is applied to other related species, as the Brachinus displosor, which can produce ten or twelve explosions successively. The common American species is Brachinus fumans.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun North America A bomber crew member who sights and releases bombs.
  • noun Canada, Britain A non-commissioned officer rank in artillery, equivalent to corporal. Abbreviated Bdr.
  • noun An artilleryman; a gunner.
  • noun entomology A bombardier beetle.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the member of a bomber crew responsible for using the bombsight and releasing the bombs on the target
  • noun a noncommissioned officer in the British artillery

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French bombarde, bombard; see bombard.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French bombarder ("a stone throwing engine").

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Examples

  • Zwerin: The navigator guides the pilot there, and the bombardier is the one to line up the plane over the target --

    2nd Lt. Jack Kaplan, USAAF 1944

  • Although every member of a combat crew contributed to the success of the whole, the pilot was the focus of his fellows 'hopes and fears, for, in bombardier Moritz Thomsen's words, he "held our lives in his hands."

    Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II 2008

  • Later that night at the officer's club, a pilot called the bombardier "yellow," saying he ought to be "kicked out" of the squadron; others present agreed and declared they never wanted to fly with him.

    Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II 2008

  • He points to an Earth bug called the bombardier beetle that produces a boiling-hot spray that is 25 percent hydrogen peroxide as a defense weapon.

    Is This Really Necessary? « UDreamOfJanie 2007

  • He had known for ever so long why at the head of each battery there rode a stalwart bombardier, and why he was called a bombardier; immediately behind this bombardier could be seen the horsemen of the first and then of the middle units.

    The Party Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1882

  • The great family of ground beetles (Carabidæ) almost all possess a disagreeable and some a very pungent smell, and a few, called bombardier beetles, have the peculiar faculty of emitting a jet of very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion.

    Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection A Series of Essays Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

  • It has made thousands of dollars for the creators, got its own website and given birth to all sorts of iFart sounds, including the cheekily named "silent but deadly," "bombardier" and

    unknown title 2009

  • In the 1950s, while working as a copywriter on Madison Avenue, he quit writing stories and started strategizing a novel based on his wartime experience as a bombardier in the Army Air Corps.

    Major Minor Alec Solomita 2011

  • Louie Zamparini, 94, Olympic hero, WWII bombardier, plane crash survivor, tortured POW and survivor of post-war turmoil who "has not been angry a single day in the last 40 years."

    Jinny Ditzler: Where There's a Will, There's a Way Jinny Ditzler 2011

  • Louie Zamparini, 94, Olympic hero, WWII bombardier, plane crash survivor, tortured POW and survivor of post-war turmoil who "has not been angry a single day in the last 40 years."

    Jinny Ditzler: Where There's a Will, There's a Way Jinny Ditzler 2011

Comments

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  • Canadian manufacturer of airplanes and subway cars.

    April 4, 2008

  • And, beetle.

    April 4, 2008

  • Bombardier is what my uncle calls the hole-in-the-ground type of squat toilet found in, er, various parts of the world.

    April 4, 2008

  • Ha!

    April 4, 2008