The etymology of -

If you read this then you are next!

HORNY - The word horny "sexually excited, lecherous" derives from an interesting yet not surprising source. As early as the mid-18th century, an erection was known as a horn or the horn, simply because it looked a bit like one. James Joyce even used the term in his Ulysses. From there, any man having the horn was called horny, and this is first recorded in 1889. It was surely in use long before then, as the horn probably was. It often takes some time for lewd slang to make it into the written record.

Oooh. Fun with words today!! Yay!!

Okey doke--this is tangentially related:

Cuckoo:c.1240, from O.Fr. cucu, echoic of the male bird's mating cry (cf. Gk. kokkyx, L. cuculus, Skt. kokilas). Slang sense of "crazy" (adj.) is Amer.Eng. 1918, but noun meaning "stupid person" is first recorded 1581, perhaps from the bird's unvarying, oft-repeated call. The O.E. was geac, cognate with O.N. gaukr, source of Scot. and northern Eng. gowk. The Gmc. words were presumably originally echoic, too, but had drifted in form and were replaced by the Fr. form. Cuckoo clock is from 1789

To:

Cuckhold:c.1250, from O.Fr. cucuault, from cucu (see cuckoo) + pejorative suffix. So called from the female bird's alleged habit of changing mates, or her authentic habit of leaving eggs in another bird's nest. The verb is 1589, from the noun

To:
"Cuckold" appears in older texts as a highly insulting and pejorative term.

Cuckolds are sometimes written of as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". This goes back to an unsubstantiated reference to a tradition in villages of unknown European location where the community gathers to collectively humiliate a man whose wife gives birth to a child recognizably not his own. This is said to have been a parade where the hapless husband is forced to wear antlers on his head as a symbol of his wife’s infidelity. Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant to the phrase, which survived.

The history of the word is thought to be related to the Cuckoo bird, who is known to put its eggs in another bird's nest. Some think that this points to another hallmark of the cuckold—the raising of a child that is not his own.


Ta-da!!