portfire
English edit
Noun edit
portfire (plural portfires)
- (historical) A case of strong paper filled with a composition of nitre, sulphur, and mealed powder, used principally to ignite the priming in proving guns, and as an incendiary material in shells.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “portfire”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)