Quote Originally Posted by Garvin View Post
That explanation would apply to virtually all spring piston airguns!

I'd say 'strike pump' is a weak term for a spring piston design and there must be a better way to distinguish spring piston airguns from direct spring guns. It's the sort of thing a Dane with English as his second language might come up with!

'Spring-powered air compression' would be more accurate, though it's a bit of a mouthful... 'Spring air' gun would be a possible compromise.

I suppose that at the time Hoff was writing, he was thinking of those horrible anti-poacher spring guns, which I think did not employ air at all to drive a missile, more like a spring-powered animal trap.
After re-reading the chapter in Arne Hoff's book, it seemed clear to me that he did indeed intend the term "strike pump" to cover all types of spring (or rubber band or hand) driven piston air guns. The first use of the term after his book was published, was to the best of my knowledge in Germany by the Hermann Historica auction house. They seem to have annexed the phrase for their own convenience to describe specifically spring piston airguns where the cylinder is in the stock and the system is cocked by a winding chain mechanism. They probably did this because there wasn't an easy alternative available. Already they had words like Bugelspanner, Hebelspanner, Kurbelspanner, Hebelschieber-Verschluss, Laufeindrucker other types of cocking system. Whatever the demerits of such a term, it seems to have caught on and has appeared increasingly in auction catalogues and articles.

To show the language problems you can get with descriptive terms for guns, take the direct spring propelled guns (i.e. those not using air compression) for example. In the USA these are referred to as "catapult guns". In the UK this would conjure up a picture of something quite different, something that would be translated back into America English as "sling-shot gun".