PSA: Nobody Has Ever "Fired" A Bow And Arrow, That's Not How It Works

This is going to be basically a short rant about etymology. There's nothing really reviewish about it, it's just a pet peeve I have.

That said. Nobody, in the history of the universe, has ever "fired" a bow and arrow. Or a crossbow. Or a catapult. Or any other example of the many devices pre-gunpowder people used to throw pointy things, rocks, and/or pointy rocks at each other.

"Firing" a weapon comes from gunpowder weapons. Because, y'know, in order to shoot a cannon, you have to put some fire on it. The same goes for early handheld gunpowder weapons, like fire lances, hand cannons, arquebuses, and matchlock muskets. And yes, eventually it did come to more generally mean "launch a projectile," but that was after the introduction of gunpowder and its subsequent ubiquity in the throwing-things-long-distances-at-people department.

So I do get why some people think "Hmm, what verb should I use to describe this person shooting someone with an arrow (or crossbow quarrel, or catapult stone, or magic spell)?" and come up with "Fire!". Because "Fire", in the modern lexicon, can mean "shoot a projectile regardless of whether there's any fire involved," and thanks to the ubiquity of guns as the modern thing-for-shooting-people-with-a-projectile, it's what our brains naturally gravitate to.

The trouble is, if the world you're writing doesn't have gunpowder weapons (or even if it does and the character in question just isn't using one), "fire" is not an applicable verb. It's anachronistic and, worse than that, inaccurate. There is no fire involved in the shooting of a bow and arrow.

(Now, I can excuse some anachronism if your story is set in the modern day or equivalent and someone's "firing" a crossbow. Those do have a pretty similar trigger to that of a gun, so a modern character is going to think of firing that weapon, not loosing it. But a medieval character wouldn't.)

But what should you use instead of "fire"? Well, there's always "loose," derived from the fact that to shoot an arrow you let go of the bowstring, and the applicable-to-pretty-much-any-ranged-weapon "shoot". Those aren't as evocative as "fire," but they also aren't anachronistic, and a character with no exposure to gunpowder would still know them and associate them with "shoot a projectile" and not "set something on fire".

In conclusion, don't use "fire" as a verb for shooting bows and arrows.

(Endnote: Alternate-universe me from the universe where guns are obsolete and we use bows and arrows in the modern era just released a similar post, titled "PSA: Nobody Has Ever "Loosed" A Gun, That's Not How It Works". So you can go check that out if you want.)