horned

1. 1
   adjective

   Having one or more horns, or projections shaped like horns.

   The horned rhinoceros charged across the savanna toward the jeep.

   Ancient helmets were sometimes given horned silhouettes to intimidate enemies.

   Oppositehornless, polled

   Note

   Built like a participle but used as an adjective: Old English hyrned goes back to a Germanic past participle meaning "fitted with horns," which is why it reads as horn plus -ed. It reaches beyond animals to anything with hornlike points. Coleridge's "horned moon" has tips, and in the heraldic "a bull's head gules, horned argent" it names the color of the horns. It takes no degrees: nothing is "more horned."

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of horn.

   The bull horned the matador before the crowd could even react.

   By morning the cornered elk had horned a hole through the gate.

   Note

   One spelling hides several verbs. In the sense "gored" or "fitted with horns" it takes an object (the bull horned the matador). In India and Singapore it is also the past of an intransitive verb meaning "honked," with no object at all. In passives such as "the helmet was horned," the participle shades into the adjective "having horns".

   The taxi driver horned twice before pulling out of the junction.

   The stage helmets were horned with carved and painted wood.

3. 3
   adjectiveobsolete

   Cuckolded; said of a man whose wife has been unfaithful to him.

   The poor cobbler was horned within a year of his wedding, and the village knew it.

   He lived in dread of becoming a horned husband, mocked at every tavern.

   Note

   An insult that survives only in older writing, resting on the image of horns fastened on a man whose wife had been unfaithful. It is the same word as the plain "having horns" meaning, turned into a figure of public shame. Keep it for historical or literary contexts. A modern reader meeting "a horned husband" without that background will most likely picture something literal.

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