(Untitled)

[aubrem]

I'm reading Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Tales series. It's set at the time of Alfred the Great. The protagonist just spent time on his land threshing corn. Corn?? What am I missing here, was there another grain called corn at that time?

Comments

[tetsubinatu]

As leni says, corn used to be just a general name for any kind of grain. After the Americas were discovered it gradually defaulted to mean maize. But still in some usages (eg: corn flour) it is non-specific. (At least in Australia it is, dunno about other countries.)

[leni_jess]

You wouldn't ever call barley or rye "corn", I think, though a "corn chandler" sold grain of all kinds. I suspect all the other corn words (from (ground) cornflour to ground (corned) gunpowder) come from what you do to wheat. (Dictionary is about 500 km away.)

[tetsubinatu]

Not these days, but in the olden days I believe that they did use 'corn' to cover all the different types of grain including barley and millet. I don't really know much about rye - I'm not even sure how long it has been around.

[miranda_macondo]

Corn = grain (any type).

[aubrem]

thank you very much.

[aubrem]

Thank you. I knew I must be missing something.