mitraille

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“
Though the yellowstone houses are pitted with the scourge of ball and mitraille, the streets are safe.

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Definitions (3)

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  1. Small missiles, especially grape, canister, fragments of iron, and the like, when fired, as upon an enemy at close quarters.
  2. To fire mitraille at. [Rare.] At the moment when the regiment nearest the enemy was beginning a retreating movement, in order to entice the Prussians on, the latter emerged from a wood between Borney and Colombey, and mitrailled the French. Scotsman.

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Examples (17)

  • Writing about the Revolution of La Granja (August 1836) and of the energy, courage and activity of the war correspondents, he says I saw them [the war correspondents] during the three days at Paris, mingled with canaille and gamins behind the barriers, whilst the mitraille was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuirassiers were dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble bulwarks. —  The Life of George Borrow
  • Each considerable city had its guillotine, and where that instrument of punishment was wanting, the fusillade or the mitraille supplied its place At this crisis, Eugene Beauvallon, a young merchant of Toulouse, presented himself one morning in the drawing room of Mademoiselle Eulalie Lasalle, an orphan girl of great beauty and accomplishment, to whom he had long been betrothed, and whom he would ere this have married but for the political troubles of the period. —  The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales
  • Though the yellowstone houses are pitted with the scourge of ball and mitraille, the streets are safe. —  The Little Lady of Lagunitas A Franco-Californian Romance
  • I saw them during the three days at Paris, mingled with canaille and gamins behind the barriers, whilst the mitraille was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuirassiers were dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble bulwarks. —  The Bible in Spain; or, the journeys, adventures, and imprisonments of an Englishman, in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula
  • Behind these and other forts of nature they maintain for days an obstinate resistance, and pour deadly mitraille. —  Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from French mitraille, small bits of grape-shot, with unorig. r, from Old French mitaille, fragments, as coarse filings, from mite, a small piece of money, a mite: see mite.
  2. from French mitrailler, fire mitraille, from mitraille, mitraille: see the noun.
 

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