Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A long and heavy musket fired from a rest, used by Asiatic tribes. It is of the same character as the jingal.

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

  • noun An Afghan matchlock or flintlock musket fired from a forked rest.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Persian جزایل (jazā'īl).

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Examples

  • He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets.

    Jill the Reckless 1928

  • He had pistols at his belt, but he did not draw them; across his shoulder swung a five-foot-long jezail, but he loosed it and flung it to the ground.

    Rung Ho Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1914

  • A puff of smoke from behind a distant rock, the boom of a jezail, and Desmond fell beside the Boy, stunned by a well-aimed shot on the edge of the cheek-bone, the slug glancing off perilously close to the right eye.

    Captain Desmond, V.C. Maud Diver 1906

  • Sounds came at length -- harsh and startling; -- the unmistakable note of the jezail; answering shots from his own men; -- proofs incontestable that a sharp engagement was in progress up above.

    Captain Desmond, V.C. Maud Diver 1906

  • The dingy white wall was relieved by groups of barbarous weapons -- Thibetan daggers, a pair of wicked-looking kookries, the jezail and Brown Bess of Border tribesmen, and the murderous Afghan knife, whose triangular two-foot blade has disfigured too many British uniforms.

    The Great Amulet Maud Diver 1906

  • I saw no signs of the Hillmen, and though we were greeted by a splutter of jezail bullets we were unable to capture any of the rascals.

    The Mystery of Cloomber Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

  • They came out from the shelter of the cedar forest with a rush, yelling furiously, each man waving his long jezail in his left hand, while a long curved tulwar, keen as a razor, flashed in his right -- big, stalwart, long-bearded, dark-eyed men, with gleaming teeth and a fierce look of determination to slay painted in every feature.

    Fix Bay'nets The Regiment in the Hills George Manville Fenn 1870

  • Proof was given, for one of the enemy started up, dropped his long jezail, and fell backwards.

    Fix Bay'nets The Regiment in the Hills George Manville Fenn 1870

  • And as the climbing Dwats were watched directly after the last volley, one who was last started up into a standing position, threw up his arms, and his long jezail fell from them down into the defile, while he balanced himself for a few moments and then dropped, turning over once, and disappearing from the watchers 'eyes.

    Fix Bay'nets The Regiment in the Hills George Manville Fenn 1870

  • All the way down the broken slope to Jugdulluk the little column trudged through the gauntlet of jezail fire which lined the road with dead and wounded.

    The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 Archibald Forbes 1869

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  • A scrimmage in a Border Station

    A canter down some dark defile

    Two thousand pounds of education

    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. -- from Kipling's poem Arithmetic on the Frontier

    September 3, 2013