licorne

From French licorne, semantic loan from Russian единоро́г (jedinoróg, literally “unicorn”), in reference to the unicorn on the coat of arms of count P. I. Shuvalov, who introduced this type of artillery piece. Doublet of unicorn.

licorne (plural licornes)

1. (historical, military) A type of muzzle-loading gun-howitzer used by the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.
   • 1824, “Answers of Sir A. D., K. C. B. of the Royal Artillery, to some questions from Lieutenant C. D. Bengal Artillery”, in The British Indian Military Repository, volume 3:

     But I think our new 24-pounder howitzer will be found superior to any of them, not even excepting the Russian Licorne.

   • 1837, T. F. Simmons, Ideas as to the Effect of Heavy Ordnance Directed Against and Applied by Ships of War, etc.:

     The Russians have a howitzer denominated licorne, the bore of which is, in its whole extent, the truncated frustrum of a cone: the only field guns in the possession of the artillery at Corfu, in 1822, were Russian guns of this description.

   • 2007, Jeff Kinard, “Eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century artillery”, in Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact:

     Essentially a hybrid between a howitzer and a gun, thus a gun-howitzer, the licorne was capable of a flatter trajectory and a longer range than the conventional howitzer.

• licorne on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Old French unicorne via reanalysis as une icorne (with indefinite article), followed by further reanalysis of the new definite form l'icorne,^[1] or from Italian alicorno, variant of liocorno.^[2]

• IPA^(key): /li.kɔʁn/

• Audio:

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licorne f (plural licornes)

1. (mythology) unicorn
2. (heraldry) unicorn
3. (finance) unicorn (startup whose valuation has exceeded one billion U.S. dollars)

• “licorne”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from French licorne.^[1][2]

• Hyphenation: li‧cor‧ne

licorne m (plural licornes)

1. unicorn

   Synonym: unicórnio