English edit

Etymology edit

arm +‎ rack

Noun edit

armrack (plural armracks)

  1. A frame, generally vertical, for holding small arms.
    • 1803, General Standing Orders for Third, or Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards, Edinburgh: R. Allan, Instructions for the Guard, Article 16, pp. 162-163,[1]
      The Carbines must be regularly place in the arm rack, according to each man’s number in the Guard.
    • 1890 May 17, Rudyard Kipling, “The Man Who Was”, in Littel’s Living Age, volume 185, number 2394, page 443:
      [The carbines] disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were opened they vanished like puffs of their own smoke.
    • 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 40, in Lord Jim[2], Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 403:
      It was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.