WheelGunsRevolvers, explained
Culture · Revolver slang · editorial reference

Why Is It Called a Wheelgun? Revolver Slang and Its Origins

Revolvers have collected more nicknames than any other kind of handgun. Some come with a birth certificate. Others just showed up one day in a crime novel or a cowboy song, and nobody wrote down who said them first.

Updated October 27, 2026·6 min read
Short answer

A revolver is called a wheelgun because its rotating cylinder turns like a wheel; the cylinder itself is often called the wheel. Unlike older slang such as six-shooter (recorded from 1842), gat (1904) or hogleg (1908), wheelgun has no well-documented first use that we could verify, so treat any precise origin date you see with suspicion.

A gun with too many names

Ask a room full of shooters what to call the thing with the cylinder, and you will get a dozen answers. Revolver. Wheelgun. Six-gun. Sixer. Snubby. Hogleg. Roscoe. Gat. Peacemaker. Some of those are precise, some are poetic, and one or two are borrowed from completely different weapons.

This site is called WheelGuns, so it seemed only fair to look up where the names actually came from. What follows sticks to what dictionaries and published histories can support. Where nobody knows, we say so. Gun slang attracts confident origin stories the way a cylinder face attracts carbon.

Revolver: the formal name, 1835

The word itself is younger than you might think. The Online Etymology Dictionary records "revolver," in the sense of a revolving firearm, from 1835. It is just an agent noun from the verb revolve, which traces to Latin revolvere, "to roll back."

The timing is not a coincidence. Samuel Colt filed a British patent in 1835 and received U.S. patent number 138 on February 25, 1836, for a revolving gun whose cylinder turned via a ratchet and pawl as the hammer was cocked. Colt himself said a ship's capstan inspired him, though earlier revolving designs existed. Elisha Collier of Boston had patented a flintlock revolver in Britain in 1818. The machine came before the word, but the word arrived with the first one that sold.

Wheelgun: the name with no birth certificate

Now the awkward part. We went looking for a documented first use of "wheelgun" or "wheel gun" and could not verify one. The major dictionaries we checked either did not list it or did not give a date.

What is clear is the logic. A revolver's cylinder rotates around a central pin, a wheel of chambers that indexes one position with each shot. Revolver shooters routinely call the cylinder "the wheel," and general references describe revolvers as "wheel guns" for exactly that reason. The nickname for the whole gun follows naturally from the nickname for its most distinctive part.

If you see a confident claim that "wheelgun" was coined in a specific year by a specific person, ask for the source. We could not find one that holds up, and we would rather tell you that than invent one.

There is also a possible tangle with older vocabulary. Before cartridges, a "wheel lock" was an ignition system that struck sparks with a spinning steel wheel. That has nothing to do with revolvers, but it is a reason to be careful with any etymology that leans on the word "wheel" alone.

Six-shooter and six-gun: counting chambers, 1842

"Six-shooter" is old and well recorded. Etymonline dates "six" or "six-shooter," meaning a revolver with six chambers, from 1842. That is only seven years after "revolver" itself, which tells you how quickly six chambers became the expected number.

"Six-gun" is the same idea in fewer syllables. Plenty of revolvers hold five, seven, eight or ten rounds today, but the six-shooter name stuck because so many of the guns that made revolvers famous, the Colt Single Action Army among them, held six.

Fun corollary: "cylinder," for the part that holds the chambers, is recorded from 1849. The cowboys had a word for the whole gun before they had a settled word for its most important part.

Hogleg: the long barrel, 1908

Merriam-Webster defines "hogleg" as a large single-action revolver of the type carried in the West by cowboys and frontiersmen, and dates its first known use to 1908. Wiktionary breaks it down as simply hog plus leg, and broadens the meaning to any large-caliber handgun, usually with a long barrel. The joke is visual: hang a long-barreled revolver in a holster and it looks a bit like a ham.

The word survived well past the frontier. Raymond Chandler used "hog's leg" in Farewell, My Lovely in 1940, for a plainclothes cop's gun, which is a nice reminder that cowboy slang went straight into hard-boiled detective fiction. North American Arms even named a tiny revolver "Hogleg," a joke we cover in our NAA mini revolver piece.

Gat and roscoe: the gangster years

The early twentieth century brought a wave of street slang for handguns, and revolvers were the handguns of the day.

These terms traveled through crime reporting, pulp magazines and film, which is why they still sound like a 1930s movie.

Snubby, belly gun and bulldog: the short ones

Short-barreled revolvers, generally under three inches, have their own vocabulary. General references list snubbie, belly gun and bulldog revolver as common colloquial names.

"Snub-nosed" as an adjective for a short, turned-up human nose dates to 1725, from the idea of being cut short. When it first got applied to guns we could not confirm. The gun meaning clearly borrows the image: a revolver with almost no barrel in front of the cylinder.

"Bulldog" has a cleaner pedigree. Webley introduced the British Bull Dog revolver in 1872, a stubby, large-caliber pocket gun, and the name became shorthand for big-bore snubs in general. Charter Arms kept that lineage alive with its Bulldog .44 Special, which we celebrate in our Bulldog piece.

Two famous snubs got their names in more official ways:

Peacemaker and friends: one Colt, many names

No revolver has more nicknames than the Colt Single Action Army of 1873.

The SAA's reputation is the reason today's cowboy-action revolvers, from Ruger Vaqueros to Italian replicas, still look the way they do.

Magnum: a cartridge word that became a gun word

One last one, because it is everywhere. "Magnum" entered handgun vocabulary in a big way with the .357 Magnum in 1935, developed with input from Elmer Keith, Phil Sharpe and Smith & Wesson's Douglas Wesson. The case was made about an eighth of an inch longer than the .38 Special so the hotter round would not chamber in older .38-only guns. Before long, "magnum" meant "the powerful version" of almost anything.

That length difference is a safety feature, not trivia. A .357 Magnum revolver can fire .38 Special; a .38 Special revolver must never be fed .357 Magnum. Fire only what the barrel is marked for.

Myths we left out

A few names show up on the internet with origin stories we could not verify, so they are not in this piece. That does not mean they are wrong, only that we would not put them in print without a source. If you have a dated, documented first use of "wheelgun," we would genuinely love to see it.

Pick your own wheel

If all this has you wanting a new six-shooter, five-shooter or seven-shooter, browse the revolver selection at Ammunition Depot, and if you already own one, a box of .38 Special remains the most traditional thing you can feed it. Whatever you call it, keep it unloaded and locked up when it is not in your hands.

Editorial note: This is an independent editorial overview built from manufacturer specifications, retailer listings and published sources. We have not performed hands-on testing of the products discussed, and nothing here is a performance guarantee. Verify specifications, compatibility and the law where you live.

Frequently asked questions

Why is a revolver called a wheel gun?

Because the cylinder that holds the cartridges rotates like a wheel with each shot. Revolver shooters often call the cylinder the wheel, and the nickname for the whole gun follows from that.

Where does the word revolver come from?

It is formed from the verb revolve, ultimately from Latin revolvere, and is recorded in the firearm sense from 1835, the era of Samuel Colt's first revolving-gun patents.

Why is a big revolver called a hogleg?

The word is simply hog plus leg, a joking comparison between a long-barreled handgun and a ham. Merriam-Webster dates it to 1908 and defines it as a large single-action revolver of the type carried in the West.

Why was the Colt Single Action Army called the Peacemaker?

The nickname is well established, but its exact origin is not clearly documented. The gun was popular with ranchers, lawmen and outlaws alike, which is the context usually given.

What does gat mean?

Gat is early-1900s slang for a revolver or handgun, a clipped form of Gatling gun. Etymonline records it from 1904.

Sources and further reading

Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links to Ammunition Depot. We may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Our editorial choices are not influenced by commissions. Check current price, stock and specifications directly with the retailer.