horn
Pluralhorns
Pluralhorns
- 1A hard growth rising from the head of a cow, sheep, goat, or related animal, typically tapering to a point and often curving.
The farmer filed down the tip of each horn so the cattle couldn't injure one another.
In the fall, wild rams crash their heavy, curling horns together to decide who gets to mate.
UsageSet phrases: lock horns, argue stubbornly; take the bull by the horns, face a problem head-on.
Note
This is the farmyard horn, the oldest picture in the word: its Indo-European root meant both head and horn. Hollowed out, such a horn became a drinking cup or powder flask.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The animal-horn sense is inherited, and the word derives from an Indo-European root meaning both head and horn. en.wiktionary.org
- Animal horns were used as drinking vessels. en.wikipedia.org
- Hollowed animal horns were used as powder flasks. en.wikipedia.org
- 2Any growth or projection resembling a horn, such as a deer's antler, a narwhal's tusk, a snail's eyestalk, or the growth on a rhinoceros's nose.
The narwhal's spiraled horn can grow several feet long.
Snails wave their soft horns to sense the world around them.
- 3A device that makes a loud sound as a warning or signal, such as on a car, or one marking the end of play in a game.
He leaned on the horn when the car ahead refused to move.
A ship's horn sounded twice as it left the harbor.
UsageYou honk, sound or blow the horn; lean on the horn means a long, impatient blast.
Note
Hooter and klaxon name the same device. Whether electric or pneumatic, it is fitted to alert pedestrians and other drivers, and the regional verb turns the noun into the action itself.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Vehicle horns can be electric. en.wikipedia.org
- Vehicle horns can be pneumatic. en.wikipedia.org
- Vehicle horns serve to warn other road users. en.wikipedia.org
- 4A brass or other wind instrument, especially the French horn or, informally, any trumpet, trombone, or saxophone.
The arranger wanted more horns in the chorus for a fuller sound.
She picked up her horn and joined the brass section.
Note
Strictly the word means the French horn, but players use it more loosely. Musicians' shorthand: the horns in a band are its brass and saxophones, whether trumpets, trombones or tenor sax. A player's own instrument is simply her horn, as when she picks it up to join the section.
- 5A peninsula or projecting tract of land, especially a pointed one extending into water.
From the ridge we could see a long horn of land curling out into the gulf, with waves breaking along its tip.
The lighthouse stood at the very end of the rocky horn.
Similarpeninsula
Note
Geography borrows the tapering shape for a promontory pushing into the sea. It survives in place names such as the Horn of Africa, though Cape Horn was actually named for the Dutch town of Hoorn. John Buchan's The Outgoing of the Tide (1902) describes an estuary lying "between two horns of land," where the plural frames a bay.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Horn can denote a peninsula or projecting tract of land. en.wiktionary.org
- Cape Horn was named after the city of Hoorn in the Netherlands. en.wikipedia.org
- The Horn of Africa exemplifies the horn-shaped geographical projection. en.wikipedia.org
- Navigating around a horn means going around a projecting tract of land. en.wiktionary.org
- John Buchan wrote The Outgoing of the Tide, first published in 1902. gutenberg.net.au
- The story describes an estuary between two horns of land at Sker Bay, using the quoted wording. gutenberg.org
- 6An instrument resembling a musical horn, used to signal or summon others.
The coach guard blew his horn as the carriage approached the inn.
Hunting horns echoed through the forest at first light.
Note
The signaling horn is judged by how far it carries, not by what it can play. A hunting horn summons hounds, and a coach horn announces arrival at an inn. It has only a few pitches, but they are enough to send coded calls over distance. That sets it apart from the musical instrument, which is played for melody. In compounds the purpose comes first: hunting horn, coach horn.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A hunting horn can summon hounds. nwhsa.org.uk
- A coach horn announces arrival at an inn. collections.readingmuseum.org.uk
- A signaling horn such as the coach horn offers only a few pitches. gutenberg.org
- A small set of horn notes can communicate recognizable calls. gutenberg.org
- 7The hard keratin substance that animal horns are made of, sometimes worked by people into combs, buttons, and other objects.
Craftsmen once shaped horn into drinking cups and knife handles.
Polished horn has a warm, translucent glow.
UsageUse made of horn, without a, for the material. Before a noun: a horn comb, horn buttons.
Similarkeratin
Note
Cattle horn was once heated and pressed into combs, buttons, lantern panes and handles, until plastics largely took its place. Keratin is the main protein in this material.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Horn was softened by heat and flattened by pressing. plastiquarian.com
- Horn was used to make combs, buttons and handles. horners.org.uk
- Flattened horn was used for lantern panes. plastiquarian.com
- Plastics largely replaced horn as a manufacturing material. plastiquarian.com
- 8An object shaped like a horn, such as a cornucopia or the pointed end of an anvil.
The farrier worked the horseshoe over the horn of the anvil, tapping it into a tighter curve.
Wicker horns overflowing with gourds and ears of corn lined the shop window before Thanksgiving.
- 9A conical device that channels and directs sound or electromagnetic waves.
The antenna's horn focused the microwave beam toward the satellite.
Early loudspeakers relied on a flaring horn to project sound across a hall.
Similarfunnel
Note
An engineering use of the shape: a flaring cone or pyramid that guides sound or electromagnetic waves between a source and open space. It improves directivity and matches impedance. It usually comes with a qualifier that says what kind it is: a loudspeaker horn, an antenna horn. Funnel describes the shape in everyday terms, while horn names the working part.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- Engineering horns can have conical or pyramidal shapes and guide electromagnetic waves into open space. technav.ieee.org
- Acoustic horns guide sound from a source into the surrounding air. usound.com
- Horns improve directivity. usound.com
- Acoustic horns provide impedance matching. sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu
- Electromagnetic horns provide impedance matching between a waveguide and free space. en.wikipedia.org
- 10A gesture made by holding up the index and little fingers with the other fingers folded down, linked especially with fans of heavy metal.
The singer grinned and raised the horns as thousands of fans roared back at him.
In the graduation photo, he's in his cap and gown, making the horns with both hands.
UsageMostly with the: raise the horns, make the horns, throw the horns.
- 11A vessel made from a hollowed animal horn, used to hold drink, ink, gunpowder, and the like.
Guests passed the mead horn around the long table.
The scribe dipped his pen into a small ink horn.
UsageMostly in compounds: drinking horn, powder horn, inkhorn. The plural can measure drink: horns of ale.
Note
Thomas Gray's 1768 note to The Fatal Sisters has "horns of mead and ale", and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology (2017) promises "horns of ale" at a feast, keeping the old word for the old setting.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Neil Gaiman wrote Norse Mythology, first published in 2017. bloomsbury.com
- Norse Mythology contains a promise of horns of ale at a feast. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 12An erection of the penis.
On the crowded bus he kept his coat over his lap, hoping no one would spot his horn.
Teenage boys tend to get the horn at the worst possible moments, like when they're called to the front of the class.
Note
Vulgar slang, and it usually takes the definite article, as in get the horn. The image is the rigid protrusion of an animal's horn. The same association lies behind the adjective horny for sexual arousal. The word belongs to crude talk and jokes, never to neutral or formal writing.
- 13The high pommel at the front of a saddle; also, either of the projections on a lady's sidesaddle that support the rider's leg.
The cowboy looped his rope around the saddle horn before dismounting.
Riding sidesaddle, she rested her leg against the smooth leather horn.
Similarpommel
- 14A telephone, especially as the means of making or taking a call.
The reporter spent all morning on the horn chasing down sources.
Quit hogging the horn. I need to make a call.
UsageMostly in get on the horn or get someone on the horn, meaning to call.
Note
Slang for the telephone as the means of making or taking a call, heard mostly in set phrases: someone gets a colleague on the horn, or spends a morning on the horn chasing sources. Blower and phone are its neighbors, and dog and bone is the rhyming-slang cousin.
- 15To sound a motor vehicle's horn; to honk.
Taxis horned impatiently while the bus blocked the narrow street.
Please don't horn so aggressively in residential neighborhoods late at night.
Note
A verb of Indian and Singaporean English, where the noun is simply put to work: "he horned five times." It means to sound a vehicle's horn, the act that honk names elsewhere, and it takes no object: impatient taxis horn at a bus that blocks the street.
- 16Either of the two pointed corners of a crescent, especially of the crescent moon.
The upper horn of the crescent moon glowed against the deep blue dusk.
Sailors once judged the coming weather by the way the moon's horns tilted.
Note
The first of a family of senses that borrow only the shape: a cornucopia, the point of an anvil, the pommel of a saddle. With the moon the figure is old and poetic, and the moon's horns are usually hers. James Thomson's "Winter" has the rising moon wear "a wan circle round her blunted horns."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Horn has senses based on resemblance in shape, including a cornucopia and the point of an anvil. en.wiktionary.org
- Horn can also mean the high pommel of a saddle. en.wiktionary.org
- James Thomson wrote The Seasons, which includes Winter. en.wikisource.org
- Winter describes the rising moon wearing 'a wan circle round her blunted horns'; the wording and feminine pronoun are accurate. en.wikisource.org
- 17To provide or equip something with horns.
- 18
- 19To make a cuckold of a man by being unfaithful with his wife; to cuckold him.
Note
Obsolete slang built on a very old joke: the deceived husband was imagined sprouting horns on his brow, the long-standing emblem of marital betrayal. To horn a man was to give him those horns. In modern English, say cuckold instead. The verb survives only in older texts, and a present-day reader may mistake it for the goring sense.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Horn meant to cuckold and is classified as obsolete slang. en.wiktionary.org
- Cuckolds were conventionally imagined with horns, making horns an old emblem of marital betrayal. en.wikipedia.org
- To give a man horns figuratively meant to cuckold him. en.wiktionary.org
- 20Any of the projections rising from the four corners of the Jewish altar of burnt offering.
- 21A projection on the shell of some contact sea mines that, when bent or broken by a passing vessel, triggers the mine to explode.
- 22A diacritical mark attached to the top right corner of the letters o and u in Vietnamese writing, forming ơ and ư.
- 23In milkweed (Asclepias) flowers, a pointed, tapering structure that curves inward.
- 24The spiral, scroll-shaped volute of an Ionic capital.
- 25A curved projection rising from the front part of a woodworking plane.
- 26The outer end of a crosstree; also, either of the projections forming the jaws of a gaff, boom, or similar spar.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English "horn," from Old English "horn," going back through Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic forms. It ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱerh₂- ("head, horn"), related to Latin "cornū" and Ancient Greek "kéras," and is a doublet of "corn," "corno," and "cornu."
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- English horn descends through Middle English horn and Old English horn from Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic forms. en.wiktionary.org
- The ultimate root is Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂-, meaning head or horn. en.wiktionary.org
- Horn is related to Latin cornū and Ancient Greek kéras. en.wiktionary.org
- Horn is a doublet of corn (the callus), corno, and cornu. en.wiktionary.org