a. A non-deciduous excrescence, often curved and pointed, consisting of an epidermal sheath growing about a bony core, on the head of certain mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, etc., and serving as a weapon of offence or defence.True horns are common to male and female animals. They are usually produced in pairs, a right and a left; sometimes in two, or (in some extinct animals) even in three pairs. Horns also occur singly, or one in front of the other, as in species of rhinoceros.

b. figurative.

c. That borne by the Ram (Aries) and Bull (Taurus) as figured among the constellations and zodiacal signs; the stars situated in those parts of the constellations; (also) †the constellation Ursa Minor [compare Italian il Carro e'l Corno the Wain and the Horn] .

d. = ‘horned animal’. Cf. shorthorn n.

†a. horn and corn: used symbolically for cattle and provisions in general.

b. neither horn nor hoof: not a trace or vestige.

c. horn with horn: (see quots.).

d. all horn and hide: nothing but skin and bone.

e. slang. in a horn: ‘a general qualification implying refusal or disbelief; over the left’ (Farmer). [Compare Italian un corno as a negative.]

f. to be squeezed through a horn (also to come out at the little end of the horn): to come off badly in an affair, esp. to fail conspicuously in a great or pretentious undertaking.

g. Other phrases of obvious meaning. Also to take the bull by the horns, etc.: see bull n.¹ 1c; to carry hay in one's horns: see hay n.¹ 3.

a. Each of the two branched appendages on the head of a deer.These differ from a true horn in being osseous, deciduous, and (usually) borne only by the male.

b. Each of the erect and permanent bony processes, covered with hairy skin, growing on the head of a giraffe; also applied to a smaller protuberance in front of the other two.

a. A projection or process on the head of other animals: e.g. the excrescence on the beak of the hornbill (hornbill n.), the antennae or feelers of insects and crustaceans, the tentacles of gastropods, esp. of the snail and slug; (also loosely) a crest of feathers, a plumicorn, as in the horned owl, etc. Also jocularly: the human nose (slang).

b. to draw in (also †shrink, pluck, pull in) one's horns: to restrain one's ardour; to repress one's pride; to lower one's pretensions: in allusion to the snail's habit of drawing in its retractile tentacles (which bear the eyes), when disturbed. Also: to restrict one's expenditure, esp. of money.

c. An erect penis; an erection. Also in to have (also get) the horn: to be sexually excited. (Not in polite use.)

a. Horns (like those of quadrupeds) have been attributed to deities, demons, to Moses, etc., and are represented in images, pictures, etc. Cf. sense 16.

b. horns of consecration n. (in Mycenaean art) a pictorial symbol or object, often found together with the double axe and pillar, connected with the Cretan worship of the ox.

a. [Cuckolds were fancifully said to wear horns on the brow.] to give horns to, to graft, plant horns on: to cuckold. [The origin of this, which appears in so many European languages, and, seemingly, even in late Greek in phrase κέρατα ποιεῖν τινί (Artemidorus, Oneirocritica II. 12) is referred by Dunger ( Germania XXIX. 59) to the practice formerly prevalent of planting or engrafting the spurs of a castrated cock on the root of the excised comb, where they grew and became horns, sometimes of several inches long. He shows that German hahnreh or hahnrei ‘cuckold’, originally meant ‘capon’.]

†b. to make horns at [ < French faire les cornes à, Italian far le corna a] : to hold the fist with two fingers extended like a pair of horns, as an insulting gesture.

a. An article manufactured of horn; the side of a lantern; a thimble, esp. one used by cutpurses to catch the edge of the knife in cutting the purse-strings; a horn spoon or scoop, a shoehorn.

b. Golf. The substance of which part of the face of a wooden club is made.

c. by the (great) horn spoon: used as a fanciful oath or formula of asseveration. U.S.

a. A vessel formed from the horn of a cow or other beast, or in later times shaped after this, for holding liquid (as drink, oil, or ink), powder, etc.; a drinking-horn; a powder-flask; (also) a similarly shaped vessel for cupping. Hence: a hornful; a draught of ale or other liquor.

b. horn of plenty (also abundance: = cornucopia n.

c. horn of plenty grass: (see quot. 1866).

a. A wind instrument more or less resembling a horn in shape, and originally formed of the horn of some beast, now made of brass or other material. Also with qualifying words, as bugle horn, hunting-horn, post-horn, tin horn, valve horn, etc.

b. to wind the horn: to blow a blast on the horn, to sound the horn; also figurative of insects making a piping or humming sound. to blow (also U.S. toot) one's own horn: ‘to blow one's own trumpet’ (see trumpet n. 3).

c. More fully French horn. An orchestral wind instrument of the trumpet class, developed from the hunting-horn, and consisting of a continuous tube some 17 feet in length, curved for convenience in holding, and having a wide bell and a conoidal mouthpiece.

e. An 8-foot reed-stop on an organ.

f. An instrument attached to motor vehicles, etc., which is sounded as a warning signal. Also attributive.

g. A horn-shaped pastry case; an ice-cream cornet.

h. Jazz slang. A trumpet.

i. Jazz slang. Any kind of wind instrument.

j. The player of a horn (senses 13c, 13h, 13i).

k. the horn: the telephone. U.S. colloquial.

a. The wind instrument as used in forms of legal process; e.g. in the Scottish ceremony of proclaiming an outlaw, when three blasts were blown on a horn by the king's messenger; hence to put (also denounce) to the horn, to proclaim an outlaw, to outlaw; †to be at the horn: to be out of the protection of the law, proclaimed an outlaw.

†b. = horning n. 4. Obsolete. rare.

a. A trumpet- or cone-shaped accessory of early gramophones and phonographs that collects sound to be recorded and amplifies the sound reproduced; a similar structure in some kinds of loudspeaker that contains the diaphragm in its throat and is designed to transmit its vibrations to the air. Also attributive.

b. Radio. Any hollow waveguide that increases in one or both transverse dimensions towards the open end and can consequently act as a transmitting or receiving aerial. Also attributive, as horn aerial, horn antenna.

a. Each of the pointed extremities of the moon as she appears in her first and last quarters (or of Mercury or Venus in a similar phase); each end of a crescent; a cusp.

b. Each tip or end of a bow.

a. The two arms of a cross. [Compare late Latin cornua crucis.]

b. The two projecting divisions of the uterus (cornua uteri). Also: any cornu.

c. The branches of a river or estuary, the narrow arms of a bay (Latin cornua).

a. The awns of barley. dialect.

b. figurative. Rigid branches of leafless trees.

a. The beak of an ancient galley (obsolete); the pointed projection of an anvil; the end of an ancient roll of bread: cf. German horn, Italian cornuto ‘a kind of loafes or simnell bread cornered’.

b. The name of: the projections or crutches on a side-saddle, which support or are grasped between the rider's knees; (also) the high pommel of a Spanish or half-Spanish saddle.

c. A piece of land projecting into the sea, etc.; a promontory.

d. A mountain peak (sometimes figurative, sometimes = Swiss-German horn).

e. A part of a plant shaped like a horn, beak, or spur.

f. The minute apex of a Hebrew letter, as at the top of מ or ד.

g. Either of the pointed projections at the edge of a pole-piece of an electric motor or generator.

a. In various other technical applications.

b. Each of a pair of rod conductors that diverge in a vertical plane from a narrow gap at the base, designed to extinguish any arc that forms in the gap and used to protect power lines from voltage surges; so horn arrester, horn gap; (also) a projecting rod conductor that protects an insulator by attracting away from it any arc that forms.