armrack

armrack

English

Etymology

arm +‎ rack

Noun

armrack (plural armracks)

1. A frame, generally vertical, for holding small arms.
   • 1803, General Standing Orders for Third, or Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards, Edinburgh: R. Allan, Instructions for the Guard, Article 16, pp. 162-163,

     The Carbines must be regularly place in the arm rack, according to each man’s number in the Guard.

   • 1890, Rudyard Kipling, “The Man Who Was” in Littel’s Living Age, Volume 185, No. 2394, 17 May, 1890, p. 443,

     [The carbines] disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were opened they vanished like puffs of their own smoke.

   • 1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Chapter 40, p. 403,

     It was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.