Talk:corn
corns edit
Are sweet corn, sugar corn, and green corn synonyms or something slightly different? Is Indian corn obsolete or just archaic? I'm marking it obs. until somebody knows better. — Hippietrail 15:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
- Indian corn is neither obsolete or archaic. It is in common contemporary usage. Googling "indian corn" returned 431,000 hits. User:LeoS Feb 10, 2007
- In Great Britain sweetcorn is used as "corn" is in the USA. i.e. The fruits of maize when served (usually boiled) as a dish or the maize plants themselves. It is "sweet" in comparison to wheat, oats, etc.
Corn as transitive verb edit
In a work of fiction, I read the sentence: "They set to work corning the powder." The sense of this was that the (gun)powder had become a solid mass due to wetting, and the workers were manually pounding it or grinding it to pellets of a uniform size.
- What I do when I find such things is to add them to a citations page. You can see how they work at Category:Citations. Also pose a question on Wiktionary:Tea room. When somebody comes up with a sense they can use the citation you found in the article. — Hippietrail 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Repeat definitions? edit
Isn't the definition, "maize," the same as the definition, "(U.S.) A cultivated grain originating in the Americas that grows on thick leafy stalks in large grain clusters called 'ears'. Some varieties are eaten fresh as a vegetable and other varieties are dried and used as a grain"? Theshibboleth 20:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
- To me those are definitely the same. Perhaps somebody was confusing differing usage and differing senses. — Hippietrail 03:48, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Corn (bunion) edit
This meaning of the word is missing
- It's a callus. A bunion is different, its is a swelling of a joint on a toe. Jonathan Webley 12:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Non-IE/UK English edit
Given that previous writers on this page established that in the US, "corn" means maize and in the UK and Ireland, "corn" means grain, these searches survey the use of "corn" by Google in the other countries with at least one million native English speakers or at least ten million total English speakers, including Trinidad and Tobago, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Poland, and China (People's Republic of) by doing the regular search in English, then appending "&meta=cr%3Dcountry" and a capitalized ttLD code to end of the old URL and then going to the new URL. Based on the short preview given in each search, the results employing "sweet corn" or "corn (sweet)" are excluded as ambiguous and those about foot calluses are excluded as irrelevant but each are included in the count to maintain NPOV. Similarly sub-results and image results are excluded to avoid doubling single sources but neither are included in the count. :)--Thecurran 08:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Canada edit
Excluding no hits, the Canadian top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the second one employs "corn" only in the label name, "Peanuts & Corn Records", it implies maize in the phrase, "peanuts and corn", which when googled gives results about maize like time.com, etc and when WP-searched gives results about maize like w:Shona people. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 06:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Australia edit
Excluding the three "sweet corn" hits and the three foot callus hits in between, the Australian top five are, as found on today's results 1-10 & 11-20:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 06:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
South Africa edit
Excluding no hits, the South African top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the fifth one employs "corn" only in the term "corn snake", it implies maize as w:corn snakes are so-named because "they have a maize-like pattern on their bellies and because they were found in corn fields". The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 07:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Philippines edit
Excluding no hits, the Filipino top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 08:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
New Zealand edit
Excluding the two "sweet corn" hits and the two foot callus hits in between, the New Zealand top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the third one employs "corn" only as a literal device, it implies maize in the phrase, "rising up like the frigid stalks of fountains", in the first sentence. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 06:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Jamaica edit
Excluding the one "corn (sweet)" hit, which came first, the Jamaican top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the third one employs "corn" only in the name of a poorly documented Jamaican community called "Corn Piece", it implies maize in the idea of a piece of maize. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 08:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 14:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Trinidad and Tobago edit
Excluding the one foot callus hit, the Trinidad and Tobago top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 09:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 14:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 14:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
India edit
Excluding no hits, the Indian top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
- flowersofindia.net
- asiancorrespondent.com
- http://food.sify.com/nonvegrecipes/ingredient/egg/Plain_Corn_Soup_with_Vegetables-201712
- livemint.com
- commodityonline.com
While the second one employs "corn" only as a literal device, it implies grain in the phrase, "seed corn". The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 08:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 08:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Nigeria edit
Excluding no hits, the Nigerian top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the third one employs "corn" only in the term, "guinea corn", it implies grain as sorghum is more like wheat than maize. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 08:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Germany edit
Excluding no hits, the German top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the third one is unclear it seems to imply grain with its image. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 14:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 14:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
France edit
Excluding no hits, the French top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the first one uses "corn" as simply an acronym, it implies neither meaning outside of the some traditions that associate chickens with eating maize. The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 14:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Pakistan edit
Excluding the one "sweet corn", which comes first, the Pakistani top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 08:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 15:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Italy edit
Excluding no hits, the Italian top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the first one is very unclear on what it means by "corn", my guess is that it is more likely to be grain. The fourth explicitly refers to grain when it mentions "corn". The other three explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Japan edit
Excluding no hits, the Japanese top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Netherlands edit
Excluding no hits, the Dutch top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
The first one uses "corn" as an acronym, so implies neither meaning excepting traditions that associate chickens with eating maize. The third one is about bromeliads, so my best guess would be that it might imply maize. The last one is about the "Edinburgh Corn Exchange", so it implies grain. The other two explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Spain edit
Excluding no hits, the Spanish top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Turkey edit
Excluding no hits, the Turkish top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
All five explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Poland edit
Excluding no hits, the Polish top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
The second one uses "corn" as a programming language and humourously refers to a "corn kernel", implying maize. The third is a jeweller whose best-seller is a £ 1281.00 gold ring with 280 zircons, implying maize. The fourth is a my-space layout that resembles farmed fields of maize. The other two explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. :)--Thecurran 15:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
China, People's Republic of edit
Excluding no hits, the Chinese top five are, as found on today's results 1-10:
While the fifth one uses "corn" only as something that looks similar to the "com" of internet domain names, it cannot be attributed to imply either meaning of "corn". The other four explicitly refer to maize when "corn" is mentioned. While the first one explicitly states that the grain meaning of "corn" is confined to British English, it explicitly states that the maize meaning of "corn" constitutes the worldwide rule, not the exception. :)--Thecurran 09:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC) :)--Thecurran 10:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Conclusion edit
Especially when the US is added to this list, it encompasses not only most of the English speakers of the world, native or not, but most of the people of the world. The data refutes that the meaning of "corn" in English is more often grain than maize. It highlights that outside of the Ireland and the UK, there are some compound terms that employ the archaic grain meaning of "corn" like "sweet corn", "seed corn", and "guinea corn" but that on its own, "corn" rarely means grain as opposed to maize. :)--Thecurran 16:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
- Great job. It's hard to be definitive about such a thing, but your evidence is the best we have. We usually use google news for current regional English differences, because the resulting citations are deemed durably archived and usable as citations. The archive also goes back to the 19th century, at least for the US and Australia. DCDuring TALK 10:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
- And yet someone removed maize and left the generic grain definition. I'm not sure why you had to go to so much trouble, either. The UK's own site favors maize to grain – albeit to such an extent principally owing to American-related links, but the British links are peculiar in their own right. Why on earth is "corn exchange" a synonym for "theater"? LlywelynII 04:41, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
- Probably because a "commodity exchange" sounds like a big important deal, and a "corn exchange" because it’s a place where large volumes of popcorn are bought and consumed. —Stephen (Talk) 05:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
- I learnt English in school in Germany. To me personally corn would mean cereal, not maize. But nevermind. What I wanted to say is that there is a US country song by Luke Bryan that goes: Rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey. Now I'm wondering. Whiskey isn't made from maize, is it? Or does he really mean maize here? (The only way we use maize in Germany is in salads, so I don't even know what you can make of it. But whiskey??)
- Another thing that came to my mind just now. I don't know how most English-speaking Germans would understand the word "corn" today. But at least 65 years ago they thought of it as "grain" or "cereal". There's this story that after WWII, the Germans asked the Americans for "corn". So they sent them maize, which amazed the Germans because they couldn't use it... I mean they did use it of course, but maize bread is still something that old people mention as one of the things they had to endure during the war times...
- Probably because a "commodity exchange" sounds like a big important deal, and a "corn exchange" because it’s a place where large volumes of popcorn are bought and consumed. —Stephen (Talk) 05:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
- Corn whiskey (also called white lightning) is an American liquor made from a mash that is comprised of at least 80% maize. Americans call maize corn (we use the word maize only for antique varietals such as blue corn that are grown and used by Native Americans), and in American English, corn means maize, not cereal or grain. The British are the ones who call cereal/grain corn.
- Rye whiskey, on the other hand, is made from a mash that is at least 51% rye. (The other ingredients of the rye whiskey mash are usually maize and malted barley.)
- When I lived in Germany (in the 1960s and ’70s), Germans did not eat maize on salads or in other other way. Maize was considered to be only for livestock (pigs, etc.). Human beings, according to Germans of that era, did not eat maize. When I lived in Gartow (on the Elbe River), my landlord used to buy maize from the farmers around Gartow and cook it for the American soldiers. Germans were very surprised that anyone would choose to eat maize. —Stephen (Talk) 02:54, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks! (I was the one who asked that question a long time ago...) Yes. As I said, maize is still not very common in Germany (among human beings). We do sometimes eat it in salads now, but that's all. It's considered a vegetable, not a form of corn/grain.
Not sure what "not IE" is supposed to mean. edit
Entry currently mentions "not IE," but I have no idea what that means. Could someone who knows what it's supposed to mean add a pipelink or spell it out in full if printing costs could still be retained within reasonable limits? Ideally, the entry will be updated. --Bxj 11:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
- Probably "non-Insular English". —Stephen (Talk) 05:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Australian usage edit
Having grown up and lived in Sydney and Melbourne, I've never heard "corn" being used in everyday life in the UK meaning, only in the US one. Very rarely hear the word "maize" either. You go to Coles or Woolworths, it's called corn. You buy a recipe book, its called corn. To whoever found an Australian government website containing the word "maize", that proves very little - bureaucrats are infamous for unusual word usages which don't reflect that of the majority of the population - they probably chose the word "maize" deliberately to avoid potential ambiguity or confusion or misinterpretation in government regulations. It doesn't mean that the average person calls it maize - most Australians call it corn. 60.225.114.230 12:49, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
- For maize in salads or "on the cob" I have heard English people say "corn" as well. Don't know if that's a new thing. I suppose they still wouldn't refer to a "maize field" as a "corn field" because that would be more ambiguous. 90.186.72.91 04:26, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Countable or not? edit
(Etymology 1, Noun): A plural is given, but all three subsenses claims it is uncountable. When is the plural used? \Mike (talk) 05:25, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
- Whenever corn is not spoken of as an undifferentiated mass, it could be used is the plural. When speaking of different varieties of corn, it is sometimes natural to speak of the many corns that are available. Very few mass nouns cannot be used this way or in some other countable way. For example, consider invention:
- As an abstract process it is non-count: "Necessity is the mother of invention.
- An instance/event of the process is count: "Were there multiple inventions of fire."
- A result of an abstract process: "Edison is credited with hundreds of inventions.
- Sometimes the countability only occurs in specialized contexts. (deprecated template usage) Beefs is almost exclusively found among those discussing the later, more industrialized stages of cattle ranching, transport, and slaughter. HTH. DCDuring TALK 09:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
"specifically the main such plant grown in a given region" edit
This clause is wrong, because in Australia "corn" has the same meaning as the US, and yet the maize corn is not the main cereal crop grown in Australia, wheat is far more prevalent. So by this definition, "corn" must mean "wheat" in Australia, but it doesn't. — This unsigned comment was added by 108.60.121.130 (talk).
- Hmm, but (as the definition shows) it does differ by country sometimes. Perhaps we should replace "specifically" in the definition with "especially", or "sometimes". What do you think? Equinox ◑ 23:19, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
- That would be better. Best would be to split off the regional senses, IMO, perhaps making them subsenses. The current sense 1 is doubly wrong when it refers to America; maize is not (as the definition explicitly claims) the main cereal there, wheat is, and wheat is not (as the definition might imply) called "corn" there — as sense 2 goes on the clarify! Separate matter: how is sense 3 used? Specifically, I'm wondering how "a grain or seed" (emphasis mine) can be uncountable. - -sche (discuss) 00:17, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
- I think the uncountable gloss on sense 3 is wrong. Look up "corns of barley" in Google Books. Equinox ◑ 00:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
- Hmm, now this is interesting and potentially elucidating: Merriam-Webster says the use of "corn" to denote "the grain of a cereal grass that is the primary crop of a region (as wheat in Britain and oats in Scotland and Ireland)" is a British English thing, i.e. that rather than the people of each country calling their principle grain "corn", it is the Brits who call each country's principle grain "corn", while the people of other countries designate specific grains "corn" without regard to how common they are. - -sche (discuss) 01:06, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
- What this discussion is missing is that while *some* British English speakers use "corn" to denote any cereal or the "principle" grain, many (perhaps even a majority) use the word "corn" only and specifically to talk about maize. I would never use it to talk about wheat.
Corns on animals edit
Don’t ‘Etymology 1 senses 7 and 8’ of ‘corn’ belong under ‘Etymology 2’? Surely, when an identical word describes similar growths that people and animals get on their bodies, the medical and veterinary senses must be equivalent and the etymology the same? Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. Go for it. DCDuring (talk) 15:09, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).
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Rfv-sense "The main cereal plant grown for its grain in a given region, such as oats in parts of Scotland and Ireland, and wheat or barley in England and Wales.". The sources given don't suggest such an extremely specific definition. The fifth one expressly indicates that "corn" can include wheat, maize, and barley -- in other words, not the seeds of a specific plant, but a class of plants. I think it is entirely synonymous with grain and cereal.__Gamren (talk) 14:03, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Such a sense is supported by the OED (“The seed of the cereal or farinaceous plants as a produce of agriculture; grain”), and a usage note explains that if the word is unqualified its meaning depends on the place to which it is applied. So in much of England it is used to refer to wheat, in North Britain and Ireland to oats, and in the US to maize. A 1767 quotation states: “Rice is the only corn that grows in the island.” — SGconlaw (talk) 17:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- It seems likely that ‘corn’ can or could refer to a regions main or staple cereal crop specifically, as ‘corn’ meaning ‘maize’ came about from a shortening of ‘Indian Corn’ (due to it being the staple grain of the ‘Red Indians’ or Amerindians). It’s the only grain they grew though, as I understand it, which complicates things slightly. Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- But the 1767 quotation doesn't support that sense, either. It implies that, in the speaker's mind, there exist other types of corn than rice. In other words, rice is a proper subset of corn.__Gamren (talk) 20:26, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- It does seem a bit too limiting a definition, perhaps it should be changed with something like “A cereal plant … especially the main one in a given region”. Perhaps the closest example I can find is the one on page 17 of this book (https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/nc580n017), ‘barley is the corn of the West’. The book clearly states that wheat, barley and oats are grown in Oregon but that barley is the main crop to feed sheep. On the other hand the use of the definite article here effects the meaning, one wouldn’t say ‘man’ means ‘main person’ because people say ‘he’s the man’. Also one link on GoogleBooks discusses Gen 41:5, where the large number of ears on the corn (7) are interpreted as being indicative of spelt, apparently the only cereal grown in Egypt at the time. (Most of these 186 passages probably refer to the same crop: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=corn&version=KJV and in many cases ‘corn’ is not preceded by ‘the’). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:22, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- It is to be expected that the range of species a common name may refer to depends on the when and where of an utterance. When Shakespeare lets queen Gertrude portray Hamlet as crying “a Rat, a Rat”,[2] the Bard and his audience would have imagined a black rat, but when we hear of a New York City rat taking pizza home on the subway,[3] we imagine a brown rat. I feel it is sufficient to note the locale-dependence of the range covered by somewhat generic common names; specifying such ranges as if they are (sub)senses is bound to prove problematic. The Usage notes may be a better place than the definition line. --Lambiam 11:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Almost all of the short English vernacular names behave as Lambian suggests. It would be nice to have some entries that contain models of how to present the probable geographic coverage of the various definitions. I have taken different approaches, strongly influenced by the entry as it stood before any substantive edits by me. There is a lot of guesswork required to determine which definition a given use of a term like corn may apply to a given citation. Examples of the reasoning can be found in some of @Fay Freak's etymologies and also in entries trying to determine what organism might be referred to by words in the Bible or Shakespeare and similar well-studied works. In some cases derived terms can show the range of possible coverage. It often helps to show that referent organisms may be in different taxonomic families or orders (even classes, phyla, or kingdoms). DCDuring (talk) 16:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- It is probably obscure what @DCDuring refers to in my etymologies, I myself do not remember, unless they are even greater than I already realized.
- Almost all of the short English vernacular names behave as Lambian suggests. It would be nice to have some entries that contain models of how to present the probable geographic coverage of the various definitions. I have taken different approaches, strongly influenced by the entry as it stood before any substantive edits by me. There is a lot of guesswork required to determine which definition a given use of a term like corn may apply to a given citation. Examples of the reasoning can be found in some of @Fay Freak's etymologies and also in entries trying to determine what organism might be referred to by words in the Bible or Shakespeare and similar well-studied works. In some cases derived terms can show the range of possible coverage. It often helps to show that referent organisms may be in different taxonomic families or orders (even classes, phyla, or kingdoms). DCDuring (talk) 16:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- It is to be expected that the range of species a common name may refer to depends on the when and where of an utterance. When Shakespeare lets queen Gertrude portray Hamlet as crying “a Rat, a Rat”,[2] the Bard and his audience would have imagined a black rat, but when we hear of a New York City rat taking pizza home on the subway,[3] we imagine a brown rat. I feel it is sufficient to note the locale-dependence of the range covered by somewhat generic common names; specifying such ranges as if they are (sub)senses is bound to prove problematic. The Usage notes may be a better place than the definition line. --Lambiam 11:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- It does seem a bit too limiting a definition, perhaps it should be changed with something like “A cereal plant … especially the main one in a given region”. Perhaps the closest example I can find is the one on page 17 of this book (https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/nc580n017), ‘barley is the corn of the West’. The book clearly states that wheat, barley and oats are grown in Oregon but that barley is the main crop to feed sheep. On the other hand the use of the definite article here effects the meaning, one wouldn’t say ‘man’ means ‘main person’ because people say ‘he’s the man’. Also one link on GoogleBooks discusses Gen 41:5, where the large number of ears on the corn (7) are interpreted as being indicative of spelt, apparently the only cereal grown in Egypt at the time. (Most of these 186 passages probably refer to the same crop: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=corn&version=KJV and in many cases ‘corn’ is not preceded by ‘the’). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:22, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
![[2]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Shakespeare_-_First_Folio_Faithfully_Reproduced%2C_Methuen%2C_1910.djvu/page788-1024px-Shakespeare_-_First_Folio_Faithfully_Reproduced%2C_Methuen%2C_1910.djvu.jpg){kind=link}
- Maybe the general way I gloss, whether in definition lines or in
|t=of etymologies. Indeed I try to expose tendencies of terms which aren’t of defined meaning. حَمْض (ḥamḍ) is a term used by Bedouins for saline, mostly chenopodiaceous and zygophyllaceous plants, man can’t do it anything better or worse with that definition except tediously presenting a list of plants allegedly denoted by the word dictionary users would not suffer to read anyway. Then I am known to highlight in plant names whether a whole genus is denoted or only some species of the exact list of which I do not want to give, or even only the genus or family of which all the taxa under it are named specifically, e.g. مُلُوخِيَّة (mulūḵiyya) is “the whole Corchorus and any species but mostly Corchorus olitorius”; it is traditionally unnatural to have such glosses but technically it’s closer to the truth. On عُشَر (ʕušar) I inform that there are only three species of which only two are in Arabic-speaking areas. On جِرْجِس (jirjis), which I almost identified myself before finding a unique blog post where the vernacular terms stood side by side with a taxonomical one, I even found it apposite to speak about the migration of two bird subspecies: Ha, the exact animal is even different depending on whether it is summer or winter! On كَاشِم (kāšim) I gave the usual candidates but retract all with the usage note that the without particular equipment one does not see a difference anyway.
- Maybe the general way I gloss, whether in definition lines or in
- So there are limits of what can be shown by pure usage of words as distinguished from mentions and knowledge of the environment, as with this bird many a people post about hunting it (→ Twitter) but no one writes the taxon. On those grasses like دِيس (dīs) it would be messy to absurd to quote separately. Trying to bare the exact meaning of corn is somewhat like this absurdity, only to a smaller degree. It varies whether a thing belongs to one definition line or already to a whole extra section. One can surely define the contested sense of corn in a long and annoying though correct way. Too bad there aren’t usage notes to put under particular definition lines, like
{{syn}}, and it is must be a whole section. Fay Freak (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- So there are limits of what can be shown by pure usage of words as distinguished from mentions and knowledge of the environment, as with this bird many a people post about hunting it (→ Twitter) but no one writes the taxon. On those grasses like دِيس (dīs) it would be messy to absurd to quote separately. Trying to bare the exact meaning of corn is somewhat like this absurdity, only to a smaller degree. It varies whether a thing belongs to one definition line or already to a whole extra section. One can surely define the contested sense of corn in a long and annoying though correct way. Too bad there aren’t usage notes to put under particular definition lines, like
- It's rarely a good idea to make statements about English plant names from usage in the King James Version. The KJV was translating unfamiliar Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek terms without the botanical and linguistic data we have today. They may have known what spelt was, but they probably didn't have any reason to associate Hebrew שבלת (or Ancient Greek στάχυς (stákhus) or Latin spica) in Genesis 41:5 with any particular species. In fact, no species was mentioned- the Hebrew and the translations all were referring to the ears, not the type of grain. "Corn" is used to translate a number of different words in a number of contexts, and cases likr the above where the fact that there was grain is inferred from the context. The KJV was mostly referring to grain in general and the translators wouldn't have known what species. About the only specific grain referred to was barley, which had a distinct name in all the languages involved. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- So it may not be a ‘faithful’ translation then?! Regardless, it’s valid to analyse how ‘corn’ is used in English when considering the definition of the word whether it’s a translation or not. I think with the revised wording we should consider this to have effectively passed RFV. The fact that ‘barley is the corn of the West’ appears in a book published in 1940 in Oregon suggests that it should perhaps be labelled ‘chiefly Britain’ rather than ‘Britain’ but that’s a minor issue. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- I’ve just made it ‘Chiefly British’ and added the Oregonian book to the citations. Overlordnat1 (talk)|
- So it may not be a ‘faithful’ translation then?! Regardless, it’s valid to analyse how ‘corn’ is used in English when considering the definition of the word whether it’s a translation or not. I think with the revised wording we should consider this to have effectively passed RFV. The fact that ‘barley is the corn of the West’ appears in a book published in 1940 in Oregon suggests that it should perhaps be labelled ‘chiefly Britain’ rather than ‘Britain’ but that’s a minor issue. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- Kiwima's definition seems good, although at least three (1, 4, 5), and probably the Marx one as well, refer not to the plant, but the grain.__Gamren (talk) 12:11, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 22:30, 14 September 2021 (UTC)