Eggcorn Forum

A blunderbuss was an early kind of shotgun with a flaring muzzle (picture here). It fired an assortment of balls and pellets that spread out over a wide area. A discharge of a rank of blunderbusses produced a volley of poorly-directed shrapnel. The noise made by the guns could be as terrifying as the projectiles.

Hidden in the word “blunderbuss” is an early eggcorn. The English name of the weapon is an approximation of the Dutch word “ donderbus,” thunder-tube. Almost as soon as the Dutch word was ported into English it took on the semantics and sound of the English word “blunder.” An earlier, transitive sense of blunder, common in the seventeenth century and all but obsolete today, encouraged the alteration of the initial sound from “d” to “bl.” That earlier “blunder” meant to mix up, disturb, confound, distract. The weapon had all of these effects (Sometimes it even had these effects on the enemy.). In addition to “blunder,” the word “bluster” may have influenced the consonantal shift, sneaking into “blunderbuss” through the second part of the word and spoonerising itself into the first half.

The metaphorical use of “blunderbuss” followed hard on the heels of the appropriation of the Dutch term. In the seventeenth century a blunderbuss was a swaggering, noisy fellow. No doubt the earlier meaning of blunder was a waveguide for the metaphorical applications. As the old sense of “blunder” gave way to the more modern sense of “blunder” (making an error, being clumsy), the metaphor shifted. Call a person a “blunderbuss” today and you describe an awkward, intrusive fellow. This is illustrated in the first example below. More common than this sense, however, is a metaphorical application of “blunderbuss” that plays on the inability of the shooter of the blunderbuss to restrict the effects of the discharge. This “blunderbuss,” employed either as a noun or an adjective, is applied to a situation in which there is no finesse, just a broad and heavy-handed swiping, having much the same sense as the word “shotgun” in “a shotgun approach.” This sense is illustrated in the second, third and fourth examples.

Examples of the modern metaphorical use of “blunderbuss:”

Post to an education forum: “”Wim is a blunderbuss. He is well-meaning but turns people off with his ego and poor judgment.””

ACLU brief: “[T]he prohibition is a blunderbuss attack on speech and not in any sense narrowly tailored to achieve its ends. ”

Article in an online journal: “We conclude that group theory is a blunderbuss that makes a great noise and is perfect for dazzling graduate students; but the physicist bold enough to try to use it to hit a target is just as apt to blow his foot off.”

Forum post on religious topics: “I can assure you that love is a blunderbuss term for a lot of human conventions.”