Where'd the word "horny" come from?!
Question:
Where'd the word "horny" come from?
* Referring to its sexual meaning.
Answers:
Here's the entry on a really good etymology site:
horny
"lustful, sexually aroused," definitely in use 1889, perhaps attested as early as 1863; from late 18c. slang expression to have the horn, suggestive of male sexual excitement (but eventually applied to women as well); see horn.
Hmmm... and to think I always figured it had to do with prostitutes being called "whores" and men who wished to consort with them being called "horny" as a gradual mish-mash of "whorey - whoreny - horny" or some similar prgression. But it looks like it came from a man's physical manifestation seeming like a horn, like on a rhinocerous perhaps, and a man being said to "have the horn" when in that state.