Is 'trebuchet' a French word? And how did that word come to mean catapult?
by 
ChandaDiane - est. 1975
ANSWERS: 6
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Trebucher means to trip, like trip over something. I'm not sure trebuchet means catapulte, maybe somewhere but I've never heard it. Une catapulte is the word I would use.
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It is cited as Anglo-French. "medieval stone-throwing engine of war," c.1300 (in Anglo-L. from 1224), from O.Fr. trebuchet (12c.) "siege engine," from trabucher "to overturn, overthrow" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trebuchet http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=trebuchet
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A trebuchet is not a catapult. It is similar in that it can hurl very heavy objects for great distances. A catapult uses built up tension to give momentum where a trebuchet uses centrifugal force. A simple example of a catapult would be a crossbow. A simple example of a trebuchet would be a slingshot - not the type where it has a giant elastic (which would actually be an example of a catapult) but the other type where there is a pocket to which is attached two pieces of string. It it spun around to gain momentum and one piece of string is released. The same goal, two different ways of going about it.
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According to my dictionary, the word is Middle English from Old French and ultimately from Frankish: trebucher, to overthrow. It is a type of catapult, but one that is its own subdivision of catapults. Look at the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet for how it works.
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I don't think it's actually French. I don't know, but luckily for you, it looks like some other people do. All I know is, it doesn't mean catapult. The difference between a trebuchet and a catapult is that a catapult uses a spring or a torsion skein to launch projectiles, and a trebuchet uses a counterweight. This makes a trebuchet able to launch a 300lb projectile 300yds, while a catapult can only match that distance with a 10lb projectile.
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A catapult hurls items in a relatively straight-forward path and was ususaly used as an anti-personell weapon on the battlefield (like in "gladiator"), not a seige device (like in "excalibur") TRebuchets WERE seige devices, because they could hurl items OVER the walls of a castle, getting at the squishy things walking around inside. Also, they were used to hurl the carcass of a dead cow (or a living one if you had a sick sense of humor) into the castle...causing disease to spread.
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