An underwater weapon shaped like a tube that moves through the water to hit and explode against a target, usually a ship or submarine.
It comes from Latin 'torpedo', meaning 'numbness' or 'stiffness', and also the name of an electric ray fish that can stun with electric shocks. The weapon was named after the fish because both could suddenly disable a target.
Before it was a weapon, a 'torpedo' was a fish that shocked other animals into numbness. Language here shows a pattern: when humans invent new weapons, we often reach for powerful animals to name them after.
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