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slughorn.

A certain fictional wind instrument.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈslʌɡhɔːn/Received-Pronunciation/ˈslʌɡˌhɔɹn/General-American[ˈsləɡ-]General-American
  1. A certain fictional wind instrument.

    nonstandard · rare
  2. Obsolete spelling of slogan (“a battle cry among the ancient Irish or highlanders of Scotland”).

    alt-of · obsolete
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *slowgʰos Proto-Celtic *slougos Old Irish slóg Middle Irish slúag Scottish Gaelic sluagh Proto-Indo-European *ǵeh₂r- Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥der. Proto-Celtic *-sman Proto-Celtic *garsmander. Old Irish gairm Scottish Gaelic gairm Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairmbor. English sloggorne English slughorne English slughorn 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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.