reverse arms

English

Noun

reverse arms (uncountable)

1. (military) A position of a soldier in which the piece passes between the right elbow and the body at an angle of 45°.
   • 2009, Christopher Jobson, Looking Forward Looking Back:

     […] it is recorded that at the funeral for Marlborough in 1722, the troops carried out a formal reverse arms drill which was especially invented for the service; it was a unique sign of respect to the great soldier.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “reverse arms”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)