a heavy, large-caliber smoothbore gun for infantry soldiers, introduced in the 16th century: the predecessor of the modern rifle.
2.
the male sparrow hawk, Accipiter nisus.
Origin: 1580–90; < Middle French mousquet < Italian moschetto crossbow arrow, later musket, orig. kind of hawk, equivalent to mosch(a) fly (< Latin musca) + -etto-et
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
"firearm for infantry," 1580s, from M.Fr. mousquette, a kind of sparrow-hawk, dim. of mosca "a fly," from L. musca (see midge). The hawk so called either for its size or because it looks speckled when in flight. Early firearms were often given names of beasts (cf. dragoon),
and the equivalent word was used in It. to mean "an arrow for a crossbow." The M.Fr. word was borrowed earlier (early 15c.) in its literal sense of "sparrow-hawk."