Mil. [f. the name of Coehorn (kū·horn, i.e., cow-horn), the Dutch military engineer.] A small mortar for throwing grenades, introduced by Baron Coehorn. In full, coehorn mortar.
1705. Lond. Gaz., No. 4104/2. The 30 Coehorn Mortars … did much damage.
1712. E. Cooke, Voy. S. Sea, 144. Hurt with one of our Grenado-Shels, which broke in the Bark, when fir’d out of the Cohorne.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Rand., xxxii. The battery … strengthened by two mortars and twenty-four cohorns.
1806. A. Duncan, Nelson, 48. The Mahonesa, of 34 guns, besides cohorns and swivels.
1853. Stocqueler, Mil. Encycl., s.v., Four inches two-fifths is the calibre of the British coehorn.
b. attrib.
1746. in Naval Chron. (1799), I. 5. He … threw some cohorn shells.
1765. R. Jones, Fireworks, IV. 107. For a coehorn balloon, let the diameter of the fuze hole be seven-eighths of an inch.
1790. Beatson, Nav. & Mil. Mem., I. 383. The ship had been three times set on fire by the cohorn shells.
