The Collaborative International Dictionary
Snaphance \Snap"hance`\, n. [D. snaphaan a gun, originally, the snapping cock of a gun. See Snap, and Hen.]
A spring lock for discharging a firearm; also, the firearm to which it is attached. [Obs.]
A trifling or second-rate thing or person. [Obs.]
Wiktionary
n. 1 A spring lock for discharging a firearm. 2 The firearm to which it is attached. 3 (context obsolete English) A trifling or second-rate thing or person.
Wikipedia
A snaphance or snaphaunce is a type of lock for firing a gun or is a gun using that mechanism. The name is Dutch in origin but the mechanism can not be attributed to the Netherlands with certainty. It is the mechanical progression of the wheellock firing mechanism, and along with the miquelet lock and doglock are predecessors of the flintlock mechanism. It fires from a flint struck against a striker plate above a steel pan to ignite the priming powder which fires the gun. Examples of this firearm can be found through Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Usage examples of "snaphance".
When he opened his musket to sprinkle gunpowder over the whole, then disassembled the snaphance to procure a makeshift but functional flint and steel, Caroline could bear it no longer.
Caroline set the snaphance carefully by the rock wall and got to her feet.
He kept one aside, a small Italian snaphance pistol with engraved gold fittings.
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.
The "General Historie" says that he left them "with three ships, seven boats, commodities ready to trade, the harvest newly gathered, ten weeks' provision in store, four hundred ninety and odd persons, twenty-four pieces of ordnance, three hundred muskets, snaphances and fire-locks, shot, powder, and match sufficient, curats, pikes, swords, and morrios, more than men.
The "General Historie " says that he left them "with three ships, seven boats, commodities ready to trade, the harvest newly gathered, ten weeks' provision in store, four hundred ninety and odd persons, twenty-four pieces of ordnance, three hundred muskets, snaphances and fire-locks, shot, powder, and match sufficient, curats, pikes, swords, and morrios, more than men.