coach horn

Noun

coach horn (plural coach horns)

1. (historical) A long, straight, valveless instrument, traditionally made of copper, originally used as a signal horn on fast coaches.
   • An old guard, who writes upon the subject of coach-horns, calls attention to the fact of the difference existing between post and coach-horns by saying: "The coach-horn is now the only recognised horn used on a four-in-hand coach' but the post-horn, fifty or sixty years ago, was the recognised...1888, Athol Maudslay, Highways and Horses, pages 453–454
   • Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC