corn

Meanings

Noun

• Any cereal plant grown for its grain, or the grain thereof.
• Maize, a grain crop of the species Zea mays.
• A grain or seed, especially of a cereal crop.
• A small, hard particle.
• A type of granular snow formed by repeated melting and refreezing, often in mountain spring conditions.
• bullets, ammunition, charge and discharge of firearms
• money.
• A type of callus, usually on the feet or hands.
• (countable) inflammatory disease of horse hoof, at the caudal part of the sole.
• (countable) skin hyperplasia with underlying fibroma between both digits of cattle.
• Something (e.g. acting, humour, music, or writing) which is deemed old-fashioned or intended to induce emotion.

Verb

• to granulate; to form a substance into grains
• to preserve using coarse salt, e.g. corned beef
• to provide with corn (typically maize; or, in Scotland, oats) for feed
• to render intoxicated

Related

Narrower meaning words

• callus

Origin

• From Middle English corn, from Old English corn, from Proto-West Germanic *korn, from Proto-Germanic *kurną, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm, from *ǵerh₂-. Cognate with Dutch koren, German Low German Koorn, German Korn, Norwegian Bokmål korn, Norwegian Nynorsk korn and Swedish korn; see also Albanian grurë, Russian зерно́, Czech zrno, Latin grānum, Lithuanian žirnis and English grain.
• In sense 'maize' a shortening from earlier Indian corn.
• From Middle English corne, from Old French corn (modern French cor), from Latin cornu.
• This use was first used in 1932, as corny, something appealing to country folk.