cornstalk

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

corn +‎ stalk

Pronunciation[edit]

  • Audio (AU)(file)

Noun[edit]

cornstalk (plural cornstalks)

  1. (botany) The tough, fibrous stalk of a corn (maize) plant, often ground for silage after harvest.
    • 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 267:
      As we all know, witches ride through the air on a broom, but sometimes their means of locomotion was a bulrush, a branch of thorn, mullein stalks, cornstalk, or ragweed, called fairies' horse in Ireland.
  2. (botany) A single specimen of a corn plant once past the seedling stage and which may, at maturity, bear multiple ears of corn.
  3. (Australia, slang, obsolete) A non-indigenous person born in Australia. [1]
  4. (Australia, slang, derogatory) a non-indigenous native of New South Wales. [1]
    He's a bloody cornstalk.

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Marshall, Peter (2001) The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire‎[1], Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 272 A few decades earlier he[a non-indigenous person of Australian birth] would have been nicknamed a ‘cornstalk’, a sarcastic reference to the way in which Australian children, like colonial wheat, grew fast and gangly; but labels could change with great rapidity, and by 1882 ‘cornstalk’ had become a caustic term for the New South Welsh.

Anagrams[edit]

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