Other forms: trebuchets
A trebuchet is a great counterweighted engine for flinging rocks. Load the trebuchet, a siege trebuchet, the trebuchet loosed.
It works by dropping a heavy weight on a short arm to swing a long one, and a large one could throw a hundred kilograms several hundred metres with real accuracy. It made high stone walls obsolete a century before gunpowder finished the job.
1nountrebuchetA great counterweighted engine for flinging rocks.
“The army built a trebuchet outside the castle and hurled huge stones at its walls.”
trebuchet is a siege engine.
The old French is to overthrow. A trebuchet threw rocks heavy enough to do exactly that to a wall.
hooks ontorock
Old French trebuchet comes from trebuchier, to overthrow or topple.
Old French
trebuchet
English, today
trebuchet
Built from
From Old French trebuchet, trebuket et al. (modern trébuchet), from trebuchier (“to overthrow, topple”), from tres- + buchier, from Old French buc (“trunk of the body”), from Old Frankish buk (“belly, trunk, torso”), from Proto-Germanic būkaz (“belly, abdomen, trunk”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰōw- (“to blow, swell”). Cognate with Old High German būh (“belly”), Old English būc (“belly, trunk”). More at bouk.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA