# corn

Pronunciation: US say "KORN" /kɔɹn/; UK/AUS say "KAWN" /kɔːn/

## Noun

1. Maize (Zea mays), a tall cereal plant grown for food, animal feed, and oil; also its kernels, eaten as a vegetable or ground as grain. *(Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US)*
   - Simple: A tall plant grown for its rows of yellow seeds, eaten as a vegetable or grain.
   - _The farm rotates corn and soybeans across its fields each year._
   - _Heavy rain flattened acres of corn before the harvest._
5. A small callus-like patch of hardened, thickened skin, usually on the feet or hands.
   - Simple: A small, hard patch of thick skin that forms on a toe or foot.
   - _Tight shoes had left a tender corn on his little toe._
   - _The podiatrist carefully pared away the corn._
4. The chief cereal crop of a country or region, or its grain, such as wheat in England or oats in Scotland. *(Commonwealth)*
   - Simple: The main grain crop of a country, such as wheat or oats.
   - _The medieval town levied a tax on every sack of corn brought to market._
   - _After weeks of rain, the English corn harvest failed, and the price of wheat and bread soared._
6. Acting, humor, music, or writing considered old-fashioned or designed to stir easy emotion. *(Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Acting, music, or writing that feels too old-fashioned or too sappy.
   - _Critics dismissed the film's finale as sentimental corn._
   - _The old radio dramas served up corn by the bucketful, and audiences ate it up._

## Verb

3. To preserve meat by curing it with coarse salt.
   - Simple: To keep meat from spoiling by packing it in coarse salt.
   - _Butchers corn brisket in barrels of brine and coarse salt._
   - _Sailors learned to corn beef for long voyages without refrigeration._
7. To feed an animal with grain, typically maize, or, in Scotland, oats.
   - Simple: To feed grain such as maize to a farm animal.
   - _Stable hands corn the workhorses twice a day._
   - _In winter they corned the oxen to keep them strong._
8. To granulate a substance, forming it into small grains.
   - Simple: To turn a substance into small grains.
   - _At the powder mill, the pressed cake is broken up and corned into grains of several sizes._
   - _Once makers began to corn their gunpowder, it stored better and fired more reliably than the old loose dust._

## Noun

2. A single grain or seed, especially of a cereal, or any small hard particle. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: One small seed or grain, such as of wheat, or any tiny hard bit.

## Verb

9. To make someone intoxicated. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To make someone drunk.

## Other meanings

- (noun) Pornography; sexually explicit images or films produced to arouse the viewer.
- (noun) Granular snow formed by repeated cycles of melting and refreezing, often found in mountain spring conditions.
- (noun) Money.
- (noun) Ammunition such as bullets, or the loading and firing of guns.
- (verb) To shoot something full of bullets, as with a shotgun.
- (noun) A bruise in the sole of a horse's hoof at the rear corner between the hoof wall and the bar, often from badly fitted shoes.
- (noun) A skin overgrowth with an underlying fibrous tumor that forms in the cleft between the two digits of cattle.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4, 7–9** — The word goes back to *ǵr̥h₂nóm ("grain") in Proto-Indo-European, which became Proto-Germanic *kurną and then Old English corn, passing unchanged into Middle English. German Korn, Dutch koren, and Swedish korn are cognates, and "grain" is a doublet. The meaning "maize" arose in 18th-century North America as a shortening of "Indian corn."
**Meaning 5** — Latin cornū became Old French corn (cor in modern French) and then Middle English corne. Its doublets are "corno," "cornu," and "horn."
**Meaning 6** — This comes from "corny."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/corn (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).