Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Trite, dated, melodramatic, or mawkishly sentimental.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of the nature of corn; furnished with grains of corn.
  • Producing corn; abounding with corn.
  • Containing corn.
  • Produced from corn; tasting strongly of corn or malt.
  • Intoxicated; tipsy; corned.
  • Horny; corneous; strong, stiff, or hard, like a horn.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Strong, stiff, or hard, like a horn; resembling horn.
  • adjective rare Producing corn or grain; furnished with grains of corn.
  • adjective rare Containing corn; tasting well of malt.
  • adjective Vulgar, Eng. Tipsy.
  • adjective informal overly or simplistically sentimental.
  • adjective informal trite or tiresome; too weak to be effective; -- said of unsubtle attempts at humor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Insipid or trite.
  • adjective Hackneyed or excessively sentimental.
  • adjective obsolete Producing corn or grain; furnished with grains of corn.
  • adjective Containing corn; tasting well of malt.
  • adjective obsolete, UK, slang tipsy; drunk

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective dull and tiresome but with pretensions of significance or originality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From corn.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

corn +‎ -y (from "corn catalogue jokes", reputedly low-quality jokes that were at a time commonly printed in mail order seed catalogues)

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word corny.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.