A howitzer is a heavy army gun. It does not shoot in a straight line like a rifle. It fires a shell high into the air so the shell comes down onto something far away — over a hill, behind a wall, onto a place the crew may not even see. It is large, often on wheels or on a vehicle, and it is a technical military word. You meet it in war news and history, not in everyday chat. Though actually, people sometimes say “howitzer” loosely for any big gun; the tidy meaning is this high-arc gun, not every cannon.

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