hang-fire

Your face is black and stinging from the explosions of the powder in the pan just inches from your right cheek, your eyes smarting from the smoke and the powder grains, and the cloud drifts away leaving the dead and wounded in front and you lean on the musket and pray that the next time the gun would not hang-fire, snap a flint, or simply refuse to fire at all.

Sharpe's Eagle Cornwell, Bernard 1981

It might seem that these defects should have been easy to correct, but there was always an outside chance that a true hang-fire existed: the fuse had been well lit and had started burning, but for some mysterious reason it had hesitated en route.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

Once he had held up operations for two hours, and in the end a thousand tons of basalt had suddenly been torn loose by a true hang-fire.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

Whenever a hang-fire occurred, anywhere in the tunnel, men shouted, "Eh, Kamejirol What you think?"

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

Another time there was a hang-fire, and the explosive burned instead of detonating, so that one of the shops caught, and there was no little work in subduing the flames.

Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel, or, the Hidden City of the Andes Victor [pseud.] Appleton

As a hang-fire, perhaps, while parties temporise and readjust themselves to a new balance.

Angels & Ministers Laurence Housman 1912

In face of K. 's hang-fire cable of the 3rd, and in face of this long three weeks of stupefaction, thank God our rulers have got out of the right side of their beds and are not going to run away.

Gallipoli Diary, Volume I Ian Hamilton 1900

There’s a reason that Courts hang-fire until a case or controversy is presented.

The Volokh Conspiracy » A Possible Way to Get a Supreme Court Ruling on the Constitutionality of FISA: 2007

It's a quality with a hell of a hang-fire to it. "

Arizona Nights Stewart Edward White 1909