Corn

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /kɔːn/

Definitions

1. A cereal plant cultivated for its edible grains, which are a fundamental food source for both humans and livestock
2. A major agricultural crop known for its kernels, commonly processed into various food products and animal feed
3. A type of grain plant producing kernels arranged on a cob, widely grown for food, animal fodder, and industrial uses

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "corn" is that it once meant any grain at all. In Old English, "corn" was a general word for seed-grain, and in Britain it still means the dominant local cereal, so English wheat-growers would call wheat "corn" and oats would be "oats." The word traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "grow old, mature," and its underlying noun meant something like "grain" or "worn-down" material, which hints at grinding. It is a close relative of "grain" and "gram" and of the Latin "granum," which entered English through a different route and kept the more general sense. The American sense of "corn" for maize is a narrowing that developed in 18th-century North America. Settlers from Britain called the plant "Indian corn," meaning the grain native to the Americas, and over time the first word was dropped, so "corn" alone came to mean maize. Separately, the sense "a hard callus on the foot" comes from a different word entirely: a Latin noun "cornū," meaning horn, passed through Old French into Middle English, referring to the horny hardness of the skin.

Synonyms: maize, grain, cereal, crop, kernel

Antonyms: weeds, pests, blight, disease, famine