hogleg

noun

hogleg

noun

Etymology From hog + leg.

1

US, Slang Any large-caliber handgun, typically with a long barrel.

  • A plain-clothes man with his coat off and his hog's leg looking like a fire plug against his ribs took one eye off his evening paper […].1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 228:
  • Well I been a-ridin' shotgun on the Houston-Dallas stage / I got me a sawed-off hogleg, twenty is the number gauge / I'd shoot anybody, that would try to stop this ride / A lot of outlaws tried it, a lot of outlaws died.1975, Marty Robbins, Shotgun Rider:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.