Early 16th century: from Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, from sluagh 'army' + gairm 'shout'.

• The first slogan was not in the world of advertising or politics, but was the Scottish Gaelic word for a battle cry or war cry, sluagh-ghairm, from sluagh ‘army’ and gairm ‘shout’. For Scottish Highlanders the slogan would often be someone's surname or a place name. For three centuries the word was confined to the work of Scottish writers, but in the early 19th century it gained a wider popularity in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and later in the century came to mean a short memorable motto or phrase. An early attempt to anglicize sluagh-ghairm produced the spelling slughorn. This was misinterpreted as some kind of military musical instrument, most famously in Robert Browning's atmospheric poem of 1855 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ‘Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew.’