coach horn

plural coach horns

1. historicalA long, straight, valveless instrument, traditionally made of copper, originally used as a signal horn on fast coaches.

   The coach horn, sometimes referred to as a "yard-of-tin," could reach almost five feet in length.

   2003, Donna-Belle Garvin, James L. Garvin, On the Road North of Boston, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   An old guard, who writes upon the subject of coach-horns, calls attention to the fact of the difference existing between post and coach-horns by saying: "The coach-horn is now the only recognised horn used on a four-in-hand coach' but the post-horn, fifty or sixty years ago, was the recognised signal-hron used by all the guards on the fast mail coaches, hence the name post-horn."

   1888, Athol Maudslay, Highways and Horses, pages 453–454

   Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

   A coach horn has infinite possibilities, and the person who puts it to his mouth and puts his wisdom into it can never be guilty of a repetition, and he who instead of giving an answer gives his friend a coach horn to use as he pleases says nothing but explains everything.

   2004, Søren Kierkegaard, (Thomas C. Oden, ed), The Humor of Kierkegaard: An Anthology, →ISBN, page 51