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corn

noun · verb

Simple meaning

Any of different cereal plants.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kawrn
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈkɔɹn

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Great Britain

    Any of various cereal plants (especially the dominant crop of the region--wheat in Great Britain or oats in Scotland and Ireland)

  2. A grain or seed, especially of a cereal crop.

  3. The dried grains or kernels or corn used as animal feed or ground for meal

  4. uncountable

    A type of granular snow formed by repeated melting and refreezing, often in mountain spring conditions.

  5. A small, hard particle.

  6. veterinary medicine

    Skin hyperplasia with underlying fibroma between both digits of cattle.

verb

  1. uscanada

    To provide (an animal) with corn (typically maize; or, in Scotland, oats) for feed.

  2. uscanada

    To granulate; to form (a substance) into grains.

  3. uscanada

    To preserve using coarse salt, e.g. corned beef.

  4. USCanada

    Feed (cattle) with corn

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (Great Britain) any of various cereal plants (especially the dominant crop of the region--wheat in Great Britain or oats in Scotland and Ireland)

Used this way, corn is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Small

seed corn

Skin

corn belt

Other combinations

sweet corncorn lawcorn oilcorn syrupgreen corncorn bread

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • cornernounPerson or profession

    A place off to the side of an area.

  • cornishnounDerived noun

    A Celtic language spoken in Cornwall.

  • cornealadjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to the transparent dome-shaped anterior portion of the outer covering of the eye.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • corn saladnounCompound term

    A plant of the genus Valerianella.

  • corn silknounCompound term

    Each of the long filamentous styles that grow as a silky tuft at the tip of an ear of Indian corn.

  • corn smutnounCompound term

    A smut fungus attacking Indian corn.

  • corn snakenounCompound term

    Large harmless snake of southeastern United States.

  • corn snownounCompound term

    Granular snow formed by alternate thawing and freezing.

  • corn speedwellnounCompound term

    Erect or procumbent blue-flowered annual found in waste places of Europe and America.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • cornstarchnounRelated term

    Starch prepared from the grains of corn.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.