corny
- 1Stale and unoriginal from overuse, often to the point of dullness, or excessively sentimental.
Her graduation speech was packed with corny lines about reaching for the stars.
The ending, with the couple kissing in the rain, felt even cornier than the rest of the film.
UsageCommon with joke, line and pun, often softened: a bit corny, a little corny. Forms: cornier, corniest.
Similarcheesy, schmaltzy, kitschy, tacky, campy
Oppositeoriginal, fresh, subtle
Note
Behind this meaning are some bad jokes: mail-order seed catalogs reputedly once printed low-quality humor, and the word came to cover anything just as tired. It names two faults that often travel together, the overused and the over-sweet; a card that reads “Roses are red, violets are blue” commits both at once. Cheesy and schmaltzy are its closest companions and can usually stand in for it.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- The hackneyed meaning is reputedly derived from low-quality jokes printed in mail-order seed catalogs. en.wiktionary.org
- 2Lame, stupid, or uncool, said especially of a person or of something they say or do.
Charging fans fifty dollars just to take a photo? That's corny.
Bro, you're corny for subtweeting her instead of just talking to her.
UsageOften a flat put-down: that's corny, or you're corny for + -ing.
Similarlame, uncool, cringey, pathetic
Oppositecool
Note
African American slang turns the word into a flat put-down of a person or a move, with none of the staleness or sentiment of the cheesy-joke meaning. It often follows its subject with no linking verb: in “Formation” (2016), Beyoncé sets it straight after her haters. It also keeps company with wack; LeBron James, rejecting an idea for the NBA postseason in 2018, called it corny and wack in the same breath.
- 3Containing corn, used especially of baked goods such as muffins and cornbread.
Fiesta Corny Muffins / Cornbread goes with everything: salad, soup, and chili.
2016, Stephanie Clarke, Willow JaroshCountry Cornbread Muffins (page 290) / Marlene Says: The cool crunchy salad and slightly sweet corny muffins are perfect partners to the creamy, spicy black bean soup.
2012, Marlene Koch, Eat More of What You Love
Less common meanings
- 4Producing corn or grain, or bearing grains of corn, as an ear of grain does.
Note
Here the word means what its parts say, corn plus -y, a formation inherited from Middle English, used for land or ears that bear grain. Matthew Prior writes of “the corny ear” in Solomon on the Vanity of the World (issued in 1719). The sense is obsolete, and like the other old meanings of corny it is drowned out by the hackneyed sense: a modern reader hears staleness first unless a harvest is plainly in view.
- 5Tipsy or drunk; under the influence of alcohol, whether slightly or heavily.
Yen day when aw was corney.
1850, Joseph Philip Robson, France's Songs of the Bards of the TyneSimilarsquiffy, drunkish, blitzed, bombed, blasted
Note
Drinking talk in Britain once had a place for it, and the slang has since died out. Joseph Philip Robson's France's Songs of the Bards of the Tyne (undated, about 1849) has a singer recall “yen day when aw was corney” (one day when I was corny), with the spelling following local speech. Squiffy and drunkish come closest to it in meaning.
- 6Strong, stiff, or hard like horn; more generally, resembling horn.
Note
A second word hides under the same spelling: this one comes from Latin cornu, "horn," not from corn, and it is long obsolete. Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) has "Up stood the cornie Reed," in the older spelling cornie, a line read here as a stem standing stiff as horn. A plant stalk also invites the grain-bearing meaning, and the line can be taken that way too.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 7 facts
- The horn-related word has a Latin origin distinct from cereal corn; derivation through Middle French is also possible. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin cornu means horn. en.wiktionary.org
- The horn-related sense is obsolete and means strong, stiff, hard, or resembling horn. en.wiktionary.org
- John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, first published in 1667. gutenberg.org
- The poem contains the quoted words, using the spelling cornie. pages.uoregon.edu
- The quotation admits the horn-related interpretation presented here. en.wiktionary.org
- A grain-bearing interpretation of the passage is also possible. gutenberg.org
- 7A softer word for horny: sexually aroused or feeling sexual desire.
Practice
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Origins
The word was already corny in Middle English, a mix of corn and -y. Its "hackneyed" meaning is linked to "corn catalogue jokes," weak jokes that mail-order seed catalogues are said to have printed in the past.
From Latin cornu, meaning 'horn'.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Corny, in its obsolete horn-like sense, derives from Latin cornu, possibly through French. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin cornu means 'horn'. en.wiktionary.org