cornstalk
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Noun
[edit]cornstalk (plural cornstalks)
- (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.
- (botany) A single specimen of a corn plant once past the seedling stage and which may, at maturity, bear multiple ears of corn.
- (Australia, slang, obsolete) A non-indigenous person born in Australia. [1]
- (Australia, slang, derogatory) a non-indigenous native of New South Wales. [1]
- He's a bloody cornstalk.
Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]the tough, fibrous stalk of a corn (maize) plant
References
[edit]- ↑ 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.