Bazooka is a playful word. When I was eight years old, and bought treats with the spare change my mother gave me to take to school, Bazooka was a piece of chewing gum for blowing bubbles which burst explosively. Derived from ‘bazoo’, slang for bluster, the word was created to name a wind instrument invented in America in 1910 by Bob Burns, a jazz musician and radio comedian. It spread into popular use during the Second World War as the name of an anti-tank gun used by the American army, whose tubular shape with a small bulging end was reminiscent of the instrument of the same name.