See also: corn-cob

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From corn +‎ cob. The Internet slang sense emerged from a 2011 tweet by Weird Twitter personality dril in which a man furiously denies being owned as he transforms into a corncob.[1][2]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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Corns on the cobs

corncob (plural corncobs)

  1. The central cylindrical core of an ear of corn (maize) on which the kernels are attached in rows.
    • 1858, Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table”, in The “Breakfast-Table” Series, George Routledge and Sons, published 1882, page 23:
      London is like a shelled corncob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the next day without wincing.
    • 1922, “Corncob Seen as Source of New Industry”, in Henry Haven Windsor, editor, Popular Mechanics, volume XXXVIII, page 765:
      Six years of persistent research at the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, has resulted in establishing the fact that a number of interesting and useful by-products can be derived from the humble corncob.
    • 2009, Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters Street, Random House,, →ISBN, page 32:
      He bit into a corncob, and Chisom watched him munch with his mouth open, his jaws working the corn like a mini grinding machine.
  2. (informal) A yokel.
    Synonyms: cornhusker, hayseed; see also Thesaurus:country bumpkin

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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corncob (third-person singular simple present corncobs, present participle corncobbing, simple past and past participle corncobbed)

  1. (intransitive, of turbines and rotor blades) To disintegrate by the blades becoming severed from the axis
  2. (transitive, US, Internet slang) To defeat (someone) who then refuses to admit defeat.

References

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  1. ^ Kate Knibbs, "Welcome to Corn Cob Season", The Ringer, 28 August 2017
  2. ^ Amelia Tait, "The internet dictionary: what does it mean to be corncobbed?", The New Statesmen, 4 September 2017