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DEFENSIVE AMMUNITION

8/18/2017

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The etymology of the word ammunition is a pretty good case for the Second Amendment. Commonly abbreviated ammo, it first appeared in the seventeenth century as a faulty breaking up of the French phrase la munition (however the similarly surviving English word munition was correctly brought over the Channel). By the way, I should note here that ammunition and munition did not always refer just to armaments, as the words do today. In olden times, they referred to military supplies in general. And before, in Middle French as municion, people would fortify with military supplies, so the word meant "fortify". This comes from Latin munitionem "defending, fortifying", which is a conjugation of munire, a verb meaning "to defend". This traces to moeina, "defensive wall", from the Proto-Indo-European root mei, which meant "to build or fix". My point here is, though, that etymologically speaking, ammunition is only used for defense.
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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a senior studying government and linguistics at Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law. 
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