corns

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of corn.

   Years of dancing in narrow shoes had left her with hard corns along her toes.

   The podiatrist trimmed the corns and recommended wider footwear.

   Note

   A plural the grain senses rarely need. Corn as a crop, or as maize, is usually a mass noun, so a field grows corn, not corns. The plural appears when single grains or seeds are being counted. Region also shifts which crop is meant: maize in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and a country's staple cereal elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of corn.

   The butcher corns her briskets in a spiced brine for ten days.

   He always corns the beef himself rather than buying it ready-made.

   Note

   Every verb use of corn takes an object: a butcher corns a brisket, a farmer corns a horse. The kitchen sense, curing with coarse salt as in corned beef, sits beside a plainer one, forming a substance into grains. In Jamaican and Multicultural London English slang, though, someone who corns a person shoots them, from the noun's sense of bullets, so context decides which reading applies.

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