Notes & Queries Archive
REPLY1850

Horns

By ROBERT SNOW.

For answer to the third Query of "L.C." (No. 24. p. 383.), I subscribe the following, from Coleridge:— "Having quoted the passage from Shakspeare, "'Take thou no scorn To wear the horn, the lusty horn; It was a crest ere thou wert born." *As You Like It*, Act iv. sc. 2. "I question (he says), whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that, like this of 'Horns,' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin."—*Literary Remains*, vol. i. p. 120. Pickering, 1849.

Topics: Literature, Phrase Origins