A hand grenade is an anti-personnel weapon An anti-personnel weapon is one primarily used to injure or kill people. Because these do not discriminate between soldiers and civilians, there are international political movements to ban these various weapons. The most common use of this term is for certain low-powered explosive devices that explodes a short time after release. The French military term grenade probably comes from the shape of the pomegranate A pomegranate is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing to between five and eight meters tall. The pomegranate is native to the Middle East, and has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times. It is widely cultivated throughout Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, North India, the drier parts of fruit, which is also called grenade in French.
Grenadiers were originally soldiers A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary. In most languages, "soldier" includes commissioned and non-commissioned officers in national land forces who specialized in throwing grenades. Today, some grenades are fired from rifles or from purpose-designed grenade launchers A grenade launcher is a weapon that launches a grenade with more accuracy, higher velocity, and to greater distances than a soldier could throw it by hand.
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