lower nitrates of cellulose which are insoluble in ether and alcohol in distinction from the highest (pyroxylin)
which is soluble. See Pyroxylin, and cf. Xyloidin. The gun cottons are used for blasting and
somewhat in gunnery: for making celluloid when compounded with camphor; and the soluble variety (pyroxylin)
for making collodion. See Celluloid, and Collodion. Gun cotton is frequenty but improperly
called nitrocellulose. It is not a nitro compound, but an ethereal salt of nitric acid. — Gun deck.
See under Deck. — Gun fire, the time at which the morning or the evening gun is fired. — Gun
metal, a bronze, ordinarily composed of nine parts of copper and one of tin, used for cannon, etc. The
name is also given to certain strong mixtures of cast iron. — Gun port (Naut.), an opening in a ship
through which a cannon's muzzle is run out for firing. — Gun tackle (Naut.), the blocks and pulleys
affixed to the side of a ship, by which a gun carriage is run to and from the gun port. - - Gun tackle
purchase (Naut.), a tackle composed of two single blocks and a fall. Totten. — Krupp gun, a wrought
steel breech-loading cannon, named after its German inventor, Herr Krupp. — Machine gun, a breech-
loading gun or a group of such guns, mounted on a carriage or other holder, and having a reservoir
containing cartridges which are loaded into the gun or guns and fired in rapid succession, sometimes in
volleys, by machinery operated by turning a crank. Several hundred shots can be fired in a minute with
accurate aim. The Gatling gun, Gardner gun, Hotchkiss gun, and Nordenfelt gun, named for their
inventors, and the French mitrailleuse, are machine guns. — To blow great guns (Naut.), to blow a
gale. See Gun, n., 3.
Gun
(Gun) v. i. To practice fowling or hunting small game; — chiefly in participial form; as, to go gunning.
Guna
(||Gu"na) n. [Skr. guna quality.] In Sanskrit grammar, a lengthening of the simple vowels a, i,
e, by prefixing an a element. The term is sometimes used to denote the same vowel change in other
languages.
