dragoon

Borrowed from French dragon. Doublet of Draco and dragon.

• IPA^(key): /dɹəˈɡuːn/

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• Rhymes: -uːn

dragoon (plural dragoons)

1. (military) A horse soldier; a cavalryman, who uses a horse for mobility, but fights dismounted.
   • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 602:

     I have served as a Dragoon in my day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours.

   • 1881, W. S. Gilbert, Patience:

     If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,
     Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon -
     Take all the remarkable people in history,
     Rattle them off to a popular tune!

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter II, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; […].

2. A carrier of a dragon musket.
3. A variety of pigeon.
   • 1829, William Clarke, The Boy's Own Book:

     Dragoons were originally bred between a Tumbler and a Horseman: by frequently matching them with the Horseman, they will acquire very great strength and agility

• dragoon bird

• dragoon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

dragoon (third-person singular simple present dragoons, present participle dragooning, simple past and past participle dragooned)

1. (transitive) To force (someone) into doing something; to coerce.

   Synonym: compel

2. (transitive) To surrender (a person) to the fury of soldiers.

• dragooner

• gadroon