Dumb question

[GunClick Rick]

Why is the lock on a muzzleloader called the lock? Or sidelock,and yes i'm seriuos Does it actually lock in something?

[Forty Rod]

Because 'latch' sounds funny.

Do you lay awake thinking about these things?

[GunClick Rick]

I was actually wondering if it helped lock the barrel in..When i loosened it the barrel popped right in but was harder before i did that.It just dawned on me maybe that's why they call it a lock,never gave it much thought before.I just shoot "em' i don't work on "em".....Ruff,ruff ruff~~~

[Professor Marvel]

AH My Dear Rick-

Now that I have (at least temporarily) been assured of continued employment, I am able to drag myself out of the mental morass I found myself and apply my Little Grey Cells to your worthy query.....

The Earliest firearm was the Gonne, nothing more than a small-bore hand-held cannon mounted on a stick that was tucked under the arm. It was fired by applying a Hot Coal or burning Slow Match (a string soaked in Salt Peter and dried) directly to the Touch Hole.

The Gonne gradually assumed the shape of a shoulder-mounted musket, and the first major improvement in the firing mechanism was the Match Lock. From that time forward, the fire-control mechanism on a gun was referred to as the "lock" or Lock-works.

After some small cogitation and research on the etymology (historical origin of the word in question) of the term I can offer the consensus that the mechanism may have been called a Lock because of the resembelence to fancy complicated mechanical Door Locks of the times (circa 1500-1550 AD) . Most assuredly only one skilled in the arts of lockmaking or clockworks would have the ability to manufacture such a device, and as the Locks progressed into the Snaphaunce, wheellock, Miquelette Lock, DogLock and finally Flintlock the internals became finer and more delicate and requiring more specialized gunsmithing skills.

Some of the terms for internals such as fly, sear, etc seem to have come from the clocksmiths , but The variety of "odd-ball names of things" such as the coque or (cock) Frizzen, and others I shall leave as an exercise for the student :-)

yhs
prof marvel

[GunClick Rick]

I thank the Professor...

[Forty Rod]

And 'match latch' is even worse.

( Dang, I crack myself up.  )

[Professor Marvel]

I am, once more, more than happy to pontificate at length on a variety of subjects, willingly providing useless information for all occasions. :-)

Say Forty, if one were to leave the match latch latch string out, allowing guests to enter at whim, would that imply you are a match for them?

yhs
prof babbles

[Forty Rod]

Well, that batch of latches and matches made me hatch a new batch of plans to catch the drift of the 'atch' words.  I didn't catch many more, natch, so had to send this patch back to Satch for some help. 

He wasn't much help.  He woke up from snatching a nap and wanted to know why watch is pronounced differently?

[litl rooster]

 

[Daniel Nighteyes]

<---- Reaching for waders, 'cause its getting deep

[Professor Marvel]

He woke up from snatching a nap and wanted to know why watch is pronounced differently?

Aha and now we enter the wonderful world of English Etymology - the study of that hodge-podge language derived from a motley mixture of words taken from Germainc Languages, Old English, Middle English, French, Latin, and almost anything else, including street slang.
We won't even talk about Scottish, Irish, or Welsh, because these languages were "displaced" by the Roman/germanic/Anglo-Saxon invaders.

And it is probably best we don't mention Welsh anyway since it is essentially unpronounceable :-)

we find that the "atsh" words such as snatch and  catch seems to have derived from Middle English & Anglo French (snacchen, or snakken; and cacchen or cacher)  and latch derives from Middle English (lachen) whilst watch derives from Old English  waeccen .

watch then appears to have survived from the archaic Old English ( look at the original "Beowulf" to see what I mean) whilst catch and latch have "more modern" roots and pronunciation - Middle English and Anglo French.

Old English (Anglo-Saxon) is virtually undecipherable to the average individual and seems to have deep roots in Northern European (Norse) and Germanic tongues - in fact "Old English" is often considered more closely related to  "Old Norse" than anything else, and both were original written in Runes. As an example here is the first line of Beowulf:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum,þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon,hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

As a result, if the pronunciation of a word looks (sounds) "kinda German" it is most likely form "Old English", some 'wider sounds' are often Anglo-French or Mediterranean (Latin)

more babbling from the prof

[GunClick Rick]

Call a cop my copper clappers have been copped by a crook

[Daniel Nighteyes]

As a result, if the pronunciation of a word looks (sounds) "kinda German" it is most likely form "Old English", some 'wider sounds' are often Anglo-French or Mediterranean (Latin)

Der neuzeitlich Englische Sprache ist meistens Deutsch.(Vergeben sie meine schlechte grammatik, bitte.)