What does blowgun mean?
A blowgun is a simple yet remarkably effective weapon consisting of a long tube — traditionally made of bamboo, cane, or hollowed hardwood — from which a dart or pellet is fired using nothing more than the shooter's breath. The technique has been practiced for millennia across Southeast Asia, the Amazon basin, and other regions where indigenous peoples relied on blowguns to hunt birds, monkeys, and small game quietly, often coating darts with plant-derived poisons such as curare. In modern usage the word appears most frequently in anthropological writing, historical accounts, and descriptions of target-shooting sports, where precision blowgun competitions remain popular in parts of Japan and North America. Because the weapon operates without explosives or mechanical parts, 'blowgun' also connotes ingenuity and simplicity, making it a vivid term in both scholarly and everyday contexts.
nounA long, narrow tube from which pellets or darts are shot by blowing through it with the breath.
- A long tube through which a dart or pellet is propelled by the force of the user's breath, used especially for hunting small game or as a sporting weapon.
"The hunter used a blowgun to bring down small game without alerting anything else in the forest."
"Competitors at the festival demonstrated remarkable accuracy with their bamboo blowguns."
"In the Amazon, hunters tip their blowgun darts with poison to take down prey high in the canopy."
Regular plural; used when referring to multiple weapons, e.g. across different cultures or collections.
"Museum exhibits compared blowguns from the Amazon and Borneo side by side."
Indigenous hunters have used blowguns to fell monkeys and birds silently for thousands of years — some darts are tipped with curare, one of the deadliest poisons known.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of blowgun
Blowgun is a transparent English compound formed from the verbs/nouns 'blow' (Old English blāwan) and 'gun', which entered Middle English in the late medieval period, possibly from Old Norse gunnr ('war'). The compound arose to describe this breath-propelled weapon as European explorers and naturalists documented its use among indigenous peoples of Asia and the Americas. It sits alongside related compounds such as 'blowpipe' and 'blowtube', which share the same first element.
Related word forms
How blowgun is actually used
The word is a straightforward compound noun and carries no strong connotation of violence; it is most often encountered in ethnographic, historical, or sporting contexts. 'Blowpipe' is an older and somewhat more common synonym, particularly in British English.
Easily confused with blowgun
A blowpipe is often a tool used by glassmakers or metallurgists to direct air or flame, whereas a blowgun specifically shoots darts or pellets; in hunting contexts, however, the two words overlap as synonyms.