2. (common).—Food taken standing; generally applied to a mid-day snack at a bar.
Horn, subs. (common).—1. The
nose. Also, Horney. For
synonyms, see Conk.
1823. Bee, Dict. of the Turf, s.v. Horney—a nose; one that resounds in expectoration.
2. (common).—A drink; a dram of spirits. For synonyms, see Go.
1847. Porter, Quarter Race, p. 193. Go on, Venus. Take another horn first.
1848. Ruxton, Life in the Far West. p. 126. They called the Scotchman to take a horn.
3. (venery).—An erection of the penis. [Properly of men only; but said of both sexes. In the feminine equivalents are Cunt-itch and Cunt-stand].
Hence To get (or have) the horn, verb phr. = to achieve erection; to cure the horn = to copulate; horning and horny, in course of, or disposed to erection; hornification, subs. = the state, or process, of erection; hornify (see verb), = to get (or give) the horn; Miss Horner, subs. = the pudendum muliebre; old horney (or hornington) = the penis.
English Synonyms.—Cock-(or prick-)stand; Irish toothache; in one's Sunday (or best) clothes; the jack; hard-on (American); horn-colic; horn-mad (said also of an angry cuckold); fixed bayonets; lance in rest; the old Adam; standing; on the stand; stiffened up; the spike.
4. (old).—The penis. For synonyms, see Creamstick and Prick.
5. (colloquial).—Also in pl., see verb.
Horn, verb (colloquial).—To
cuckold. [Becco ( = a he-goat)
and cornuto ( = a horned thing)
are good Italian for a cuckold;
in Florio (Worlde of Wordes,
1598) andar in cornouaglia senza
barca (i.e., to go to Cornwall
without a ship) = to win the
horn; and the expression, as
the example from Lydgate
appears to show, may very
well have been imported into
English from the Italian. Also,
it seems to have begun to be literary
about the middle of the sixteenth
century, when the Italian
influence was at its height. For
the rest it passed in triumph into
written English, was used in every
possible combination, had a run at
least two centuries long, and is
still intelligible, though not in
common service.] See Actæon,
antlers, bull's feather,
freeman of bucks, etc.
Hence, to hornify (see subs., sense 3), and to graft (or give) horns; to wear horns = to live a cuckold; horner, subs. = a cuckold maker; horn-mad, adj. phr. (q.v.); horned, adj. = cuckolded; horn-grower (or merchant) subs.= a married man; horn-fever, subs. = cuckoldry; to exalt one's horn, verb. phr. = (1) to cuckold, and (2) to rejoice in, or profit by, the condition; to wind the horn = to publish the fact of cuckoldom; horns-to-sell, subs. phr. = (1) a lewd wife, and (2) a wittol; to point the horn = to fork the fingers in derision (as in Hogarth's 'Industrious and Idle Apprentice,' 1790, plate v.); horn-works = the process of cuckolding; at the sign of the horn = in cuckoldom; horn-pipe = (see quot. 1602); horned herd, subs. phr. = husbands in general (specifically, the city men, the Citizens of London (the cuckolding of whom by West-end gallants is a constant theme of seventeenth century jokes); gilt-horn, subs. = a contented Cuckold; spirit of hartshorn = the suspicion or the certainty of cuckoldom; long horns, subs. = a notorious cuckold; knight of hornsey, also member for horncastle, subs. phr. = a cuckold, etc.
d. 1440. Lydgate, Falle of Prynces, ii., leaf 56 (ed. Wayland, 1557, quoted in
