Horn

How to spell horn

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce horn

What does horn mean?

1. nounA hard, pointed projection growing on the head of certain animals such as cattle, goats, or rhinoceroses.
2. nounA device on a vehicle that produces a loud warning sound.
3. nounA brass or wind musical instrument played by blowing.

Horn in a sentence

• The bull lowered its head and pointed one horn at the gate.

• The taxi driver leaned on the horn when traffic refused to move.

• She played the French horn in the school orchestra for three years.

• Poachers hunt the rhinoceros for its single horn.

• A sharp blast from the horn warned the cyclist to pull over.

• The jazz solo opened with a long, mournful note on the horn.

Where does horn come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Horn is a very old native English word, descending directly from Old English 'horn', which meant the bony projection on an animal's head and also a vessel or wind instrument made from such a thing. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in Dutch 'hoorn' and German 'Horn', and it ultimately traces back to the same ancient Indo-European root that gave Latin 'cornu' (horn) and Greek 'keras' (horn). Because people once shaped real animal horns into trumpets and drinking cups, the single word naturally spread to cover musical horns and signalling devices. From there it travelled into the modern senses of a vehicle's warning device and the brass instrument of an orchestra. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, which is why it is one of the easier words to commit to memory.

How the word is built

• horn (whole root; Old English/Germanic word for a hard animal projection)