(especially formerly) a European cavalryman of a heavily armed troop.
2.
a member of a military unit formerly composed of such cavalrymen, as in the British army.
3.
(formerly) a mounted infantryman armed with a short musket.
verb (used with object)
4.
to set dragoons or soldiers upon; persecute by armed force; oppress.
5.
to force by oppressive measures; coerce:
The authorities dragooned the peasants into leaving their farms.
Origin
1615-25; < Frenchdragon, special use of dragondragon, applied first to a pistol hammer (so named because of its shape), then to the firearm, then to the troops so armed
Related forms
dragoonage, noun
undragooned, adjective
British Dictionary definitions for dragoon
dragoon
/drəˈɡuːn/
noun
1.
(originally) a mounted infantryman armed with a carbine
2.
(sometimes capital) a domestic fancy pigeon
3.
a type of cavalryman
(pl; cap when part of a name): the Royal Dragoons
verb (transitive)
4.
to coerce; force: he was dragooned into admitting it
5.
to persecute by military force
Derived Forms
dragoonage, noun
Word Origin
C17: from French dragon (special use of dragon), soldier armed with a carbine, perhaps suggesting that a carbine, like a dragon, breathed forth fire
Word Origin and History for dragoon
n.
1620s, from French dragon "carbine, musket," because the guns the soldiers carried "breathed fire" like a dragon (see dragon). Also see -oon.
v.
1680s, literally "to force by the agency of dragoons" (which were used by the French kings to persecute Protestants), from dragoon (n.). Related: Dragooned; dragooning.
dragoon in Technology
language A distributed, concurrent, object-orientedAda-based language developed in the EspritDRAGON project by Colin Atkinson at Imperial College in 1989 (Now at University of Houston, Clear Lake). DRAGOON supports object-oriented programming for embeddable systems and is presently implemented as an Ada preprocessor. ["Object-Oriented Reuse, Concurrency and Distribution: An Ada-Based Approach", C. Atkinson, A-W 1991, ISBN 0-2015-6-5277]. (1999-11-22)