Meaning & use

machine gun

noun·Academic

An automatic firearm that fires bullets rapidly and continuously while the trigger is held down.

See it in a sentence

The soldiers set up a machine gun to defend the position.

Museums often display old machine guns from twentieth-century wars in special exhibits.

A note on using this word

Machine-gun can also be used as a verb or adjective, as in machine-gun fire, describing something rapid and continuous.

Words with a similar meaning

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