Cape Horn
3
4.5
- proper noun
- The sailing ship bravely rounded Cape Horn on its long journey across the Southern Ocean.
- round Cape Horn
Examples
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Well then, I’d look for him rounding Cape Horn, westward.
Fiction book (1995) -
Now he sailed from Tahiti to Cape Horn, through the Southern Ocean.
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We shall go with the winds to Jamaica by way of Cape Horn.
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On my way to a rendezvous with Cape Horn.
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Now look, we'll go around Cape Horn to Tahiti.
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Hes the fastest around Cape Horn.
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I have failed completely in my attempt to round Cape Horn... and circumnavigate the globe.
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"Cape Horn, eh?
Fiction book (1995) -
Streaking across the Roaring Forties south of Australia, north past Cape Horn, and back into the Atlantic again.
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At half-past twelve today, James Valentine departed this life... ...as the result of illness and fatigue sustained at Cape Horn.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is compositional: 'cape' denotes a headland projecting into water and 'horn' suggests a projecting or pointed feature, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer that Cape Horn is a headland (a projecting piece of land). It is a proper name so the exact geographic location (southern tip of South America, belonging to Chile) is encyclopedic and not derivable, but the basic sense as a prominent promontory is transparently recoverable from the constituents.
Etymology
Cape Horn gets its name from the Dutch town of Hoorn. A Dutch sailor named the sharp southern point after his hometown when he sailed past it, and because many ships met fierce weather there, that's why Cape Horn today means the dangerous southern tip of South America.