the.com/silencer
Does not make guns go 'pew' quietly — just stops them from deafening you.
means A device fitted to a gun barrel that muffles the muzzle report by trapping and slowing the escaping gases, reducing (not erasing) the sound.
from A straightforward 20th-century compound of 'silence' plus the agent suffix '-er' — 'that which silences.' The device itself was patented in the early 1900s (Hiram Maxim, of Maxim gun fame, is credited with an early commercial version), marketed honestly for what it does to noise, not to bullets. Hollywood did the rest, turning a hearing-protection gadget into a spy-movie whisper of 'pew.'
- actual noise
- still loud as a jackhammer, roughly 120-140 decibels
- real name
- suppressor, inventor Hiram Maxim called it that too
- movie myth
- hollywood 'pfft' sound is pure sound-department fiction
- legal status
- regulated or banned in many countries, oddly easy in US