Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
A certain fictional wind instrument.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: nonstandard, rare
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Obsolete spelling of slogan (“a battle cry among the ancient Irish or highlanders of Scotland”).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: alt-of, obsolete
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
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.
