Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition

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Noun.

A curved piece of polished horn, wood, or metal used to facilitate the entrance of the foot into a shoe.

Figuratively:

(a)

Anything by which a transaction is facilitated; a medium; – by way of contempt.

Spectator.

(b)

Anything which draws on or allures; an inducement.

[Low]

Beau. & Fl.

shoeing-horn ‎(plural shoeing-horns)

shoehorn
(Britain, obsolete, Elizabethan English) Anything that induces or "draws on" thirst.

1949, John Dover Wilson (compiler), Life in Shakespeare's England. A Book of Elizabethan Prose, Cambridge at the University Press. 1st ed. 1911, 2nd ed. 1913, 8th reprint. In Glossary and Notes