CORN, originally meaning a small hard particle or grain, as of sand, salt, gunpowder, etc. It thus came to be applied to the small hard seed of a plant, as still used in the words barleycorn and peppercorn. In agriculture it is generally applied to the seed of the cereal plants. It is often locally understood to mean that kind of cereal which is the leading crop of the district; thus in England it refers to wheat, in Scotland and Ireland to oats, and in the United States to maize (Indian corn). (See GRAIN TRADE ; CORN LAWS ; AGRICULTURE ; WHEAT ; MAIZE ; etc.) The term "corned" is given to a preparation of meat (espe cially beef) on account of the original manner of preserving it by the use of salt in grains or "corns." The differences in the application of the word corn in various countries and districts have sprung from the nature of the favour ite grain-crop in the locality. "Corn in Egypt" is a world-wide proverb for plenty. When first used, it probably meant wheat, but may have meant barley as well, the only two cereals in, culti vation in contemporary civilizations. In Britain, where the only cereals widely grown are wheat, barley and oats, "corn" has come to mean two things. It is either a generic term for these three cereals, though it would also cover maize and rye, or it is a synonym for wheat alone; and wheat has generally been regarded in Britain, as in many other countries, as the essential grain of arable farming. In Scotland, on the other hand, corn commonly (though by no means invariably) means oats, for the reason that oats are the chief cereal of the country and so the index of plenty. The strictest use of the word is found in America. Throughout the United States and in South America wherever English is used, corn means specifically maize, often called in Britain Indian corn. Maize has doubtless acquired the name because the crop is of more importance than all the other grains in these countries; but this American use of the word has spread to Canada and is gain ing ground elsewhere. Where maize is used as a cooked vegetable, as even in Britain, it is frequently eaten from the cob and is then known as corn-on-the-cob. So corn may be said to carry three meanings in Britain; and the result has been to confuse many minds. Indeed a large proportion of the vast urban popu lations has no clear idea of the meaning of the word. But the generic use is the commonest. A corn-field means a field given up to grain; and a cornflower and a corncockle describe flowers whose habitat is in the arable field where any sort of grain is sown.
Nor do these interpretations exhaust the meaning of the word. As its derivation and verbal connection with "grain" and "kernel" indicate, corn may mean a single grain of any of the cereals. In this regard local use varies a great deal. In the chief corn-growing counties of England, farmers chiefly use the scientifically incor rect word "berry" for the single grain of an ear. See MAIZE : Maize Trade of the United States.