Horn OK Please
English
Etymology
The exact bracketing of the phrase is unclear (see 2014 quotation).
Phrase
- (India, road transport) A request to honk before overtaking a commercial vehicle that is written on the rear end.
- 2014, Vanessa Able, Never Mind the Bullocks: One Girl's 10,000 km Adventure around India in the Worlds Cheapest Car, Hachette UK, page 92:
- ‘Awaaz Do’ […] is another way of expressing the single most phrase painted on the backs of lorries, ‘Horn OK please’
At first I thought I got the gist: please horn, OK? For the enormous trucks that rarely made use of their rear-view mirrors, it was essential to let them know of your desire to pass. However, I did find myself pondering, especially after several hours of chevron hypnosis, that there may be more than one way of viewing this curious assemblage of words. Was ‘horn’ a command or simple noun in this case? How to interpret the combination of the collaborative ‘OK’ with the supplicatory ‘please’? The more I thought about it, the less sense the phrase made and the more the three words appeared to have accidentally collided with one another to make a vaguely baffling bumper sticker.
- 2015 May 1, Somit Sen, “Maharashtra government says tata-bye-bye to ‘Horn OK Please’ on trucks”, in The Economic Times[1], archived from the original on 30 January 2016:
- [D]isplaying the phrase "Horn OK Please" is a gross violation of Section 134 (1) of the Maharashtra Motor Vehicle Rules, which deals with signages to be used on the rear and sides of vehicles. "It encourages people to honk every time you pass a truck or tempo. It sends a wrong message to citizens[.]"
- 2015 May 4, Times News Network, “Implement 'Horn OK Please' ban properly, say activists”, in The Times of India[2], archived from the original on 24 March 2023:
- MUMBAI: Activists here have welcomed the recent decision of transport commissioner Mahesh Zagade to ban the use of Horn OK Please on the rear side of commercial vehicles, such as trucks and tempos, across Maharashtra.