Etymologically
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corny

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈkɔːni/[1]
  • US: /ˈkɔɹni/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English corn + -y, from the noun meaning grain.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Corn is from Old English corn (“grain, seed”).[3] The modern sense "trite, sentimental" comes from an earlier sense "rustic, appealing to country folk",[8][9][3] as Green's Dictionary of Slang explains it, from the qualities attributed to country people living among cornfields.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of ale, perhaps tasting strongly of the corn or malt: about 1386, in Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue.[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Chaucer's use for ale, perhaps "malty", was obsolete or dialectal by 1825.[2][3] From the 1570s and 1580s corny meant producing or full of corn,[3][2] and Johnson (1755) gave "producing grain or corn" beside a sense "horny" from Latin.[11] In East Anglian dialect, recorded by Forby before 1825, it also meant tipsy,[2][4] and in Scotland, Ireland and northern England a corny year was a fruitful one;[12] in Kent it was used of green peas grown old and tough.[12] The colloquial sense, old-fashioned, sentimental or trite, first appears in 1932 in the British jazz paper Melody Maker, of a staccato style of playing;[2][10][3] Etymonline suggests that it first meant appealing to country folk, and notes corn-fed in the same sense from 1929.[3] Collins dates the "rustic, banal" sense to the 20th century.[5]

Timeline

  • c. 1386 – of ale, tasting strongly of malt.[2][3]
  • 1580 – producing or abounding in corn.[2][3]
  • 1595 – of or pertaining to growing corn.[2]
  • 1687 – full of grains of corn.[2]
  • before 1825 – in East Anglian dialect, tipsy.[2][4]
  • 1932 – old-fashioned, sentimental, trite.[2][10][3]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Tiresomely old-fashioned or hackneyed; trite: He told the same corny jokes at every party.[5][6][2]
  2. Too sentimental; mawkish.[5][2]
  3. Of or producing corn; full of corn.[5][6][2]
  4. (archaic) Of ale, tasting strongly of malt.[6][2][4]

Word family

  • cornily
  • corniness
  • corn
  • corned
  • cornball
  • corn-fed

Usage notes

Two other adjectives corny come from other sources: one meaning having corns on the feet, from corn in that sense (1689 in Merriam-Webster, 1705 in the OED),[6][2][4] and an obsolete one meaning horny, from French corne or Latin cornu (“horn”) (about 1600 to 1755).[2][11]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)