The word for today is…
torpedo (noun, verb):
noun
1: a weapon for destroying ships by rupturing their hulls below the waterline: such as - a: a submarine mine
b: a thin cylindrical self-propelled underwater projectile
2: a small firework that explodes when thrown against a hard object
3: electric ray
4: a professional gunman or assassin
5: submarine
verb
1: to hit or sink (a ship) with a naval torp
edo : strike or destroy by torpedo
2: to destroy or nullify altogether : wreck
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : Torpedo comes to English by way of Latin torpēdō, which has two quite different meanings. It refers to a state of inertness, sluggishness, or lethargy, and it refers to a creature also known as the electric ray. When English speakers borrowed the Latin word, it was to apply it with this second meaning; in early 16th century English torpedo referred to those round-bodied short-tailed rays that are naturally equipped with a pair of electric organs. (The ancient Greeks reportedly used electric rays to numb the pain of surgery and childbirth.) The most familiar use of torpedo today, referring specifically to the cylindrical underwater naval weapon, dates to the 1866 development of the self-propelled torpedo by British engineer Robert Whitehead—but that use built on a century-old employment of torpedo in referring to another invention. In 1776 a small submersible vessel developed by American inventor David Bushnell was used (unsuccessfully) in an assault on a British ship in New York harbor. Bushnell was reported to have named the vessel “American Turtle or Torpedo.” He didn’t stick with the appellation, but it likely informed Robert Fulton’s use of torpedo for his own underwater explosive devices in the early 19th century, and it laid the groundwork for the word’s application to Whitehead’s torpedo.
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