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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
carbine
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He made him fling away his carbine.
▪ The boy came in through the back carrying Russell's blanket roll and carbine and put them down on the passenger bench.
▪ The Dragoon dropped the carbine and fumbled for his sword which hung from its wrist strap.
▪ The officer, placed toward the middle of the group, carries binoculars and a carbine.
▪ Their weapons were just as fantastically varied: M-2 carbines.
▪ They thrust their carbines into the bucket holsters on their saddles and dragged out their long straight-bladed swords.
▪ We have now used the general approach in refs 2 and 3 to place yttrium carbine into nanotubes.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Carbine

Carbine \Car"bine\, n. [F. carbine, OF. calabrin carabineer (cf. Ot. calabrina a policeman), fr. OF & Pr. calabre, OF. cable, chable, an engine of war used in besieging, fr. LL. chadabula, cabulus, a kind of projectile machine, fr. Gr. ? a throwing down, fr. ? to throw; ? down + ? to throw. Cf. Parable.] (Mil.) A short, light musket or rifle, esp. one used by mounted soldiers or cavalry.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
carbine

short rifle, 1580s, from French carabine (Middle French carabin), used of light horsemen and also of the weapon they carried, of uncertain origin, perhaps from Medieval Latin Calabrinus "Calabrian" (i.e., "rifle made in Calabria"). A less-likely theory (Gamillscheg, etc.) connects it to Old French escarrabin "corpse-bearer during the plague," literally (probably) "carrion beetle," said to have been an epithet for archers from Flanders.

Wiktionary
carbine

n. A rifle with a short barrel.

WordNet
carbine

n. light automatic rifle

Wikipedia
Carbine

A carbine ( or ), from French carabine, is a long arm firearm but with a shorter barrel than a rifle or musket. Many carbines are shortened versions of full-length rifles, shooting the same ammunition, while others fire lower-powered ammunition, including types designed for pistols.

The smaller size and lighter weight of carbines make them easier to handle. They are typically issued to high-mobility troops such as special-operations soldiers and paratroopers, as well as to mounted, artillery, logistics, or other non-infantry personnel whose roles do not require full-sized rifles, although there is a growing tendency for carbines to be issued to front-line soldiers to offset the increasing weight of other issued equipment. An example of this is the US Army's M4 carbine, which is standard-issue.

Carbine (horse)

Carbine (1885–1914), was an outstanding New Zealand bred Thoroughbred racehorse, who competed in New Zealand and later Australia. During his racing career he won 30 stakes or principal races. Owing to his performance on the track and his subsequent achievements as a sire, he became one of five inaugural inductees into both the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame and the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.

Carbine (disambiguation)

A Carbine is a long arm firearm with a shorter barrel than a rifle or musket.

The word may also refer to:

Usage examples of "carbine".

The French cavalrymen, more used to the sword than the carbine, were aiming high, but that common fault was small consolation amidst their bullets.

Think you, Donald, Bedel of the Warrens, that we can expel them with claidheammors and carbines?

The Carbine bucked as he pulled the trigger, the bullets biting into the lip of the brick wall, spraying dust and chunks of brick in every direction.

And I set aside childhood and practiced as best I could and as best my kyn would allow me with claidheammor and skean and carbine, though it was seldom indeed I could cozen a clannsman into allowing me to use his firearm.

Armed with a carbine and a pair of pistols, I ran about the town with the others, in quest of the enemy, and I recollect how disappointed I was because the troop to which I belonged did not meet one policeman.

He had changed his uniform for a goatskin, wore hobnailed shoes, a belt full of pistols, and carried a heavy carbine.

The knifers would come with their deadly machetes, and backing them, Panchez and the men with carbines would complete the mopping-up process.

The others were awake: Peterson lacing up his boots, McCloy shaving by flashlight at the makeshift washstand outside, Lemmon wiping the dampness from his carbine, Tester doing the same to his rare and precious SK-50, a submachine gun he had acquired because his pistol seemed an inadequate means of self-defense.

His maser carbine had picked them off one at a time under the horrified eyes of the Nicholls family.

Powel made a frantic lunge for the maser carbine in the saddle holster.

Each time, Darcy killed them with a single shot from his maser carbine.

Campbell looked around at Grant, who moved beside him, and now Porter began to move as well, and on both sides the carbines were raised a bit higher.

Their peakless caps were cocked at a rakish angle and short carbines dangled behind their shoulders.

From prudential motives they did not allow themselves to straggle, and by instinct they kept a look-out over the undulating plains to the eastward, ready with their loaded carbines.

Besides the common weapons of the peasants there was a puncheon half full of pistols and petronels, together with a good number of muskets, screw-guns, snaphances, birding-pieces, and carbines, with a dozen bell-mouthed brass blunderbusses, and a few old-fashioned wall-pieces, such as sakers and culverins taken from the manor-houses of the county.