Etymology Dictionary

CARBINE,  a short light musket.  (F.,—Gk.)   Also spelt carabine or carabin; and, in Tudor English, it means (not a gun, but) a man armed with a carbine, a musketeer.   In this sense, the pl. carabins is in Knolles' Hist. of Turks, 1186, K (Nares); and carbine in Beaum. and Fletcher, Wit without Money, v. 1.—F. carabin, 'a carbine, or curbeene; an arquebuzier, armed with a murrian and breast-plate and serving on horse-back;' Cot.   [Mod. F. carabine, introduced from Ital. carabina, a small gun, in the 16th century (Brachet); but this does not at all account for carabin as used by Cotgrave.]   Corrupted from O.F. calabrien, calabrin, a carbineer, sort of light-armed soldier; Roquefort.   This word originally meant a man who worked one of the old war-engines, and was afterwards transferred to a man armed with a weapon of a newer make.—O.F. calabre, a war-engine used in besieging towns; Roquefort.—Low Lat. chadabula, a war-engine for throwing stones; whence calabre is derived by the change of d into l (as in O. Latin dingua, whence Lat. lingua) and by the common change of final -la to -re.—Gk. καταβολή, overthrow, destruction.—Gk. καταβάλλειν, to throw down, strike down, esp. used of striking down with missiles.—Gk. κατά, down; and βάλλειν, to throw, esp. to throw missiles.   Cf. Skt. gal, to fall.—✔GAR, to fall; Curtius, i. 76; Fick, i. 73.   And see carabina in Diez.   Der. carbin-eer.