horny
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English[edit]
Etymology 1[edit]
From Middle English horny, equivalent to horn + -y. Compare German hornig. Compare also Dutch hoornachtig, Swedish hornaktig, Old English hyrniġ (“angular”).
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈhɔːni/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈhoɹni/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)ni
Adjective[edit]
horny (comparative hornier, superlative horniest)
- Hard or bony, like an animal's horn.
- 1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, Collins, published 1998, Chapter 6:
- Two Dwarfs were at the bellows, another was holding a piece of red-hot metal on the anvil with a pair of tongs, a fourth was hammering it, and two, wiping their horny little hands on a greasy cloth, were coming forward to meet the visitors.
- Having the hard consistency and pale colour of an animal's horn.
- Synonym: ceratose (en, biology)
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- She could not see, for her whitish eyes were covered with a horny film.
- Having horns.
- Synonym: horned
- 2024 April 28, Karen M. Dvornich, “Short-horned Lizard”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)[1], archived from the original on 2010-10-28:
- In 1997, 4th and 5th grade Waterville Elementary students told me they saw Short-horned lizards (commonly known as Horny toads) all around their area.
Translations[edit]
hard or bony
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having horns
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Further reading[edit]
- “horny”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “horny”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- Jonathon Green (2024) “horny adj.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
Etymology 2[edit]
From the phrase "having the horn", and similar phrases which were used to refer to male sexual arousal in the 18th century, later abbreviated to horn (a hard projection) + -y (having the quality of); initially this referred to physical sexual response in males (the male erection being analogized as a "horn"), yet later was semantically generalized to refer not only to sexual arousal but also to sexual desire in both males and females.
Adjective[edit]
horny (comparative hornier, superlative horniest)
- (slang, informal) Sexually aroused, with or without physical manifestation; experiencing a feeling of sexual desire.
- 1949, Henry Miller, Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion), Grove Press, published 1965, →ISBN, page 104:
- [H]er thick, gurgling voice saying […] : "Get it in all the way… please, please do… I’m horny."
- 1951, J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, page 82:
- After a while I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I was feeling pretty horny. I have to admit it.
- 1971 October, Black World, page 65/1:
- Ain’t that the horny bitch that was grindin with the blind dude.
- 1993, “Back Seat (of My Jeep)”, in 14 Shots to the Dome, performed by LL Cool J:
- As I turn the corner, starin' in your cornea / You're gettin' hornier and hornier
- 2019 December 13, Tracie Egan Morrissey, “The Year Women Got ‘Horny’”, in New York Times[2]:
- “Mrs. Fletcher,” the HBO mini-series about a middle-aged woman’s sexual reawakening, showcases a horny mom who can’t stop masturbating to pornography.
- That we are horny creatures is proven by the fact that the invention of video calling found us already having sex over the phone.
- - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- 2014, David Burr Gerrard, Short Century :
- It’s something of a cliché, at least among war correspondents, that war makes people unusually horny; what it actually does is make you want to touch as much flesh as you can get your hands on.
- 2015, Bink Cummings, MC Chronicles, The Diary of Bink Cummings, Vol. 2 :
- Horniness is just a mental state with a physical repercussion.
- (slang, informal) Sexually arousing.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:sexy
- 2003, Peep Show (TV series), Funeral (episode)
- Mark Corrigan: She [the dentist] should have to wear a mask for this kind of thing. Reagan or Batman or... actually she'd look pretty horny as Batman... Jesus, no, don't!
- (of males, obsolete) In a state of physical sexual arousal: experiencing tentigo, tumescence of the penis as a result of sexual arousal.
Derived terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
- (sexually aroused): → Irish: adharcach (semantic loan)
- (sexually aroused): → Russian: хорни (xorni)
- (sexually aroused): → Saterland Frisian: honig
Translations[edit]
sexually aroused
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sexually arousing
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms suffixed with -y
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɔː(ɹ)ni
- Rhymes:English/ɔː(ɹ)ni/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- English slang
- English informal terms
- English terms with obsolete senses
- en:Appearance
- en:Emotions
- en:Sex