Meanings
plural slughorns · alternative slug-horn
- nonstandardrareA certain fictional wind instrument.
Sounde, sounde the slughornes, to bee hearde fromm farre.
1767, Thomas Chatterton, The Tournament, line 1502 more examples
[...] And yet / Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set / And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
1855, Robert Browning, “‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.’”, in Men and Women […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, stanza 34, page 148The horn sounded a third challenge. / 'That's a slug-horn, that is,' said Colin knowledgeably. 'Like a tocsin, only deeper.'
1989, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, page 153 - obsoleteObsolete spelling of slogan (“a battle cry among the ancient Irish or highlanders of Scotland”).First known use 17th–19th c.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*slowgʰos
- Proto-Celtic*slougos
- Old Irishslóg
- Middle Irishslúag
- Scottish Gaelicsluagh
- Proto-Indo-European*ǵeh₂r-
- Proto-Celtic*garsman
- Old Irishgairm
- Scottish Gaelicgairm
- Scottish Gaelicsluagh-ghairm
- Englishsloggorne
- Englishslughorne
- Englishslughorn
See slogan. Sense 1 (“wind instrument”) is due to an incorrect use of the word slughorn (sense 2: “battle cry”) by the English poet Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) in his 1760s pseudo-Medieval poetry. He described the fictional instrument in footnotes as “warlike instruments of music” (Ælla, a Tragycal Enterlude), “a musical instrument not unlike a hautboy” (Eclogue the Second), and “war trumpets” (Battle of Hastings (No. 2)). The erroneous sense was then continued by the English poet and playwright Robert Browning (1812–1889) in his 1855 poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. The use by English author Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) in 1989 is a deliberate allusion to Chatterton.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
slughorn. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slughorn
“slughorn.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slughorn. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “slughorn,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/slughorn.
Source: slughorn on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.