early French cornette type of headdress, standard, standard-bearer, ultimately from Latin cornu horn, point. The word orig meant a woman's headdress such as that worn by the Sisters of Charity, which had large stiff wings or horns. It later came to mean a flap or strip of lace hanging down from a woman's headdress, hence the standard of a cavalry troop (orig a long tapering pennon), and the standard-bearer