Word.ws English Dictionary

put horns on

put horns on verb: to cuckold, to be unfaithful to or make someone’s partner so.

Verb

put horns on (third-person singular simple present puts horns on, present participle putting horns on, simple past and past participle put horns on)

  1. (transitive) To cuckold, to be unfaithful to or make someone’s partner so.
    • City Comedies depicted the pursuit of wealth, status, and women in Jacobean London. In a typical plot, a ne'er-do-well young gentleman dupes his older relatives out of money, while lower-class rascals play cruder tricks on respectable citizens. For example, in Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My...1983, Wendy Griswold, “The Devil's Techniques: Cultural Legitimation and Social Change”, in American Sociological Review, volume 48, number 5, page 672 of 668–680

Forms of put horns on

third-person singular presentputs horns on
present participleputting horns on
past participleput horns on
pastput horns on
alternative formput the horns on
alternative formput horns upon

Origin of put horns on

Compare Russian наста́вить рога́ (nastávitʹ rogá), Spanish poner los cuernos.

Questions about put horns on

What does put horns on mean?
Put horns on means to cuckold, to be unfaithful to or make someone’s partner so.
What part of speech is put horns on?
Put horns on is a verb.
What is the past tense of put horns on?
The past tense of put horns on is put horns on.

Words near put horns on in the dictionary

  1. put hair on one's chest
  2. put hair on someone's chest
  3. put heads together
  4. put her there
  5. put him in to get him out
  6. put horns on
  7. put in
  8. put in a good word
  9. put in a word
  10. put in an appearance
  11. put in an oar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put horns on (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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