Literal Translation
A wind strong enough to dehorn oxen
Actual Meaning
Blowing up a storm
Etymology
According to modern dictionaries, the expression has been in use since 1832. At the time, it was used figuratively, as evidenced by these two excerpts:
“… sailors do not use vague expressions; they have words in their language to describe all degrees and, so to speak, all nuances of the wind; he has: breeze, light breeze, fair breeze, good breeze and gale-force breeze. And if he needs to express a comparative idea, or the sensation that the wind gives him or the violence of its efforts, he says that it is blowing like the devil or that it is blowing hard enough to knock the horns off oxen […] Isn’t hyperbole beautiful?”
(Augustin Jal, Scènes de la vie maritime, 1832)
‘Prov. and by exaggeration, It is windy enough to knock the horns off oxen. The wind is blowing violently.’
(Dictionary of the French Academy, 6th edition, 1835)
In other words, a wind strong enough, by hyperbole, metaphor or exaggeration, to knock the horns off oxen. As we can well imagine, even the strongest gust of wind in the world would not be able to tear the horns off an ox’s head. But this figure of speech must have come from somewhere, right?
According to one ‘unofficial’ theory found in Le Correspondant, published in 1876, the expression originated on ships transporting cattle.
In heavy seas and strong winds, the force of the rolling motion pushed the oxen headfirst against the ship’s wall. The impact broke their horns, sometimes even tearing them off, which sometimes caused their death. The verb ‘to dehorning’ takes on a concrete meaning here: the wind is strong enough to literally dehorning the oxen.
Another theory, the most widespread on the Internet, relates to the dehorning of cattle, which has been practised in the fields since at least 1200, when the verb “to dehorn” was first recorded.
In the past, farmers would dehorn cattle once a year to prevent them from injuring each other or from their horns getting in the way while they were feeding. The operation was carried out on a windy day, and the cattle were then made to run in the fields, as this helped to dry out the wound and speed up healing. It was also a way of preventing the wound from becoming infected by flies and other insects, which are attracted to blood but flee from the wind. A wind strong enough to dehorn cattle means here ‘a wind conducive to dehorning cattle’.
It would be easy to decide between the theories without this 1876 book, which traces the origin of the expression to ships…
Should we dismiss this explanation on the grounds that it only appears once? Examples of the phrase being used in a maritime context are common. After all, cattle farmers surely had more opportunities to say that the wind was strong enough to dehorning cattle than ship captains, but both theories seem plausible.
In any case, I would tend to… follow the herd by adhering to the most widely accepted theory.