Sniper

Sniper
	French Foreign Legion snipers using the Hecate II (front) and the FR-F2 (back) in Afghanistan
Occupation
	Military / Law enforcement
Activity sectors	Use of high-precision rifles and special reconnaissance

Vasily Zaytsev, left, and Soviet snipers equipped with Mosin-Nagant M1891/30 during the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942.

A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who operates to maintain effective visual contact with the enemy and engage targets from concealed positions or at distances exceeding their detection capabilities.^[1] Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision rifles and high-magnification optics, and often feed information back to their units or command headquarters.

In addition to marksmanship and long range shooting, military snipers are trained in a variety of tactical techniques: detection, stalking, and target range estimation methods, camouflage, field craft, infiltration, special reconnaissance and observation, surveillance and target acquisition.

Etymology

The verb "to snipe" originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India in reference to shooting snipes, which was considered an extremely challenging game bird for hunters. The agent noun "sniper" appears by the 1820s.^[2] The term sniper was first attested in 1824 ^[3] in the sense of the word "sharpshooter".^[2]

A somewhat older term is "sharp shooter", a calque of 18th-century German Scharfschütze, in use in British newspapers as early as 1801.^[4]

Other Languages

العربية: قناص

asturianu: Francotirador

azərbaycanca: Snayper

беларуская: Снайпер

беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎: Снайпэр

български: Снайперист

català: Franctirador

čeština: Odstřelovač

dansk: Finskytte

Deutsch: Scharfschütze