The blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading

Muzzleloader

A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and usually the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun . This is distinct from the more popular modern designs of breech-loading firearms...

 firearm

Firearm

A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...

 with a short, large caliber

Caliber

In guns including firearms, caliber or calibre is the approximate internal diameter of the barrel in relation to the diameter of the projectile used in it....

 barrel

Gun barrel

A gun barrel is the tube, usually metal, through which a controlled explosion or rapid expansion of gases are released in order to propel a projectile out of the end at a high velocity....

, which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot

Lead shot

Lead shot is a collective term for small balls of lead. These were the original projectiles for muskets and early rifles, but today lead shot is fired primarily from shotguns. It is also used for a variety of other purposes...

 and other projectiles of relevant quantity and/or caliber. The blunderbuss could be considered to be an early form of shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

, which was often adapted to military and defensive use. The term dragon was used to describe a blunderbuss in handgun

Handgun

A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....

 form, and it is from this that the term dragoon

Dragoon

The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...

 evolved.
The term "blunderbuss" is of Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 origin, from the Dutch word donderbus, which is a combination of donder, meaning "thunder", and buss, meaning "Pipe" (Middle Dutch: busse, box, tube, from Late Latin

Late Latin

Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...

, buxis, box).

The transition from donder to blunder is thought by some to be deliberate; the term blunder was originally used in a transitive

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

 sense, synonymous with to confuse, and this is thought to describe the stunningly loud report of the large bore, short barreled blunderbuss.