Word of the Day: Sabot

The Word Genius website enlightens us about the name of this pram class.

SABOT
Part of speech: noun
Origin: French, 16th century
Definition: A blocky wooden shoe; In weaponry, a disk that positions the projectile in the rifle barrel or cannon.

Examples of Sabot in a sentence:
– A European peasant woman might have worn a handmade kerchief and clunky sabots on her feet.
– The cannon replica was missing an important piece for positioning and firing, the sabot.

About Sabot:
If shown a picture of a sabot, you might call it a clog. This clunky shoe, made out of a single block of wood, was the footwear of choice among 16th century European peasants. Then the military stole the word to describe a wooden piece of equipment used for stabilizing weapons that resembles the shoe.

Did you Know?
“Sabot” comes directly from the same word in French, meaning wooden shoe. But did you know there’s a tie to the Italian word “ciabatta”? You’ll know this as a type of bread, but it was so named because of its resemblance to the wooden shoe.