horning

Pluralhornings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of horn.

   The bull was horning the wooden fence in a rage.

   She accused him of horning in on her business deal.

   Note

   Every verb sense of horn shares this -ing form, and most of them take an object: to horn something is to gore it, or to fit it with horns. One sense stands apart. In India and Singapore, horning means honking a car horn, and it takes no object: drivers simply keep horning. The obsolete slang sense, to cuckold, belongs to older texts.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The activity of sounding a train's horn.

   The horning at the railroad crossing echoed across the valley.

   Loud horning warned drivers as the freight train approached the junction.

   Similarhonking

   Note

   This is a neighbor's word more than a railroader's. It names horn noise as something residents near a line are subjected to, and it turns up in complaints about trains blowing where they need not. The arguments usually turn on grade crossings, because federal horn-sounding rules tie the warning to them. In this sense horning is usually a nuisance rather than a safety signal.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The crescent appearance of the Moon as it waxes.

   The horning of the Moon hung low over the harbor at dusk.

   Farmers once timed their planting by the Moon's horning.

   Note

   The crescent's two pointed tips are the horns behind the name. The word is built from horn plus -ing, the moon putting on its horns as it grows. John Gregory's Notes and Observations upon some Passages of Scripture (1646) writes of "the Horning" as the reason a crescent was set up on steeples. The sense belongs to the waxing phase and the crescent shape, not to the full Moon.

4. 4
   nounhistoricalUScountable

   A noisy mock serenade played on tin horns and other discordant instruments to express public disapproval.

   The unpopular couple endured a raucous horning that lasted past midnight.

   Townsfolk staged a horning to shame the man who had wronged the widow.

   Similarcharivari

   Note

   American folk justice was named for its loudest instrument. Tin horns blown out of tune, joined by anything else that made a din, shamed someone a community disapproved of. The custom belongs to the past, and so does the word. Use it when writing about earlier times, and expect to gloss it for modern readers. A present-day noisy protest would not be called a horning.

5. 5
   noundialectalScotlanduncountable

   The legal issuing of letters of horning, an order compelling a debtor to pay.

   The merchant resorted to horning when the debtor ignored every demand for payment.

   Under old Scots law, horning compelled a debtor to pay or face outlawry.

   Note

   In Scots law, letters of horning were a royal charge ordering a debtor to meet an obligation. Ignoring them meant being denounced and "put to the horn" as a rebel against the crown. The noun names the issuing of those letters, so it describes a creditor's step. A creditor resorts to horning, and a debtor faces it.

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