concept
Mitrailleuse (fashionable loanword)
Mitrailleuse
also: metralyeza, митральеза
French term for an early rapid-fire volley gun, borrowed into Russian as a fashionable buzzword of 1880; Nikolai Stamatich's toast in "The Wedding Season" absurdly repurposes it as a metaphor for romantic ardor.
Reading notes
- Captions for Drawings §111 mitrailleuses of love
The mitrailleuse (French, a rapid-fire volley gun / early machine gun) was a fashionable foreign loanword of the day, here absurdly repurposed by a tipsy toastmaster as a metaphor for romantic ardor -- alongside 'indifferentism,' part of Chekhov's send-up of borrowed jargon.