Cornflakes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A breakfast item typically made of toasted corn that is often enjoyed with milk or eaten on its own as a crunchy snack
2. A cereal product made from flattened kernels of corn that is commonly served with milk or consumed as a light snack
3. A crispy breakfast food consisting of small toasted flakes derived from corn, usually eaten with milk

Etymology: In 1894, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg left a batch of boiled wheat dough out too long. When they rolled it out, it broke into flakes instead of forming sheets, and the brothers found that toasting those flakes made a crisp breakfast food. Will Keith later switched the base grain to corn and built a company around the product. The name is a plain compound of "corn" and "flake." In American English, "corn" means maize, the crop the cereal was made from. In British English, "corn" historically meant grain in general, especially wheat, so a British reader hearing the name might expect something made from wheat, which is part of why the word sounds slightly different on each side of the Atlantic.

Synonyms: cereal, breakfast cereal