Indian corn en · NOUN
Pronunciation
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Etymology
From Indian + corn. Since the early 17th century. Before the Columbian Exchange, the English word corn meant any of various cereal grains, with usage much like the word grain is often used today. When maize, a New World crop, was introduced to English-speakers, they called it Indian corn as a natural term for "the kind of corn (grain) that comes from the Indies." The notion of the geography was very fuzzy at the time for most Europeans; most English speakers at the time did not have a clear notion that the East Indies and the West Indies were not the same thing or adjacent portions of one thing, so the word Indies encompassed vast overseas scope. Eventually English-speakers in North America came to use the word corn to mean maize when not otherwise specified, and they came to use the term Indian corn to mean a certain fancy type of maize.
Meanings
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(uncommon, uncountable) Maize.
Mother Ceres was exceedingly fond of her daughter Proserpina, and seldom let her go alone into the fields. But, just at the time when my story begins, the good lady was very busy, because she had the care of the wheat, and the Indian corn, and the rye and barley and, in short, of the crops of every kind, all over the earth; […]
1853, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Pomegranate Seeds”, in Tanglewood Tales, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, page 214:But alass! these, when they had maize (yt is, Indean corne) they thought it as good as a feast, and wanted not only for 5. days togeather, but some time 2. or 3. months togeather, and neither had bread nor any kind of corne.
1623, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation:It was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; […] he knew exactly how many grains were gone out of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; […].
1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XXI, in Adam Bede […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:Here and there an effort had been made to clear the land, and something like a field had been marked out, where, among the stumps and ashes of burnt trees, a scanty crop of Indian corn was growing.
1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 23, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:Season them with pepper. Put them in; and after the whole has boiled three hours at least, take four ears of young Indian corn, and having grated off all the grains, add them to the soup and boil it an hour longer.
1857, Eliza Leslie, “Autumn soup”, in Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book, Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson:Every house has a garden. Many meadows, like those in England, are enclosed with three rails, lying one above the other; Indian corn is cultivated in the fields; the grass was dry and withered.
1828, Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, chapter IV, in Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826, volume 1, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey:In the hot days of summer, over against the dark forest the bright green of our little patch of Indian corn rippled in the wind.
1904 May, Winston Churchill, The Crossing, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, book I (The Borderland), page 3:
- (uncountable) A variety of maize in which the kernels are variously coloured, rather than being all of the same colour.
- (uncountable) A variety of candy corn that contains chocolate in addition to honey-based candy.
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Translations (4)
de Hartmais (a type of maize) · nrf maïs (a type of maize) · tzo ixim (a type of maize) · paw kiciirit (a type of maize)