Coon vs Corn - What's the difference?
coon | corn |
(informal, chiefly, Southern US) A raccoon.
*1963 Sterling North, Rascal , Avon Books (softcover), p 100:
(racial slur) A black person.
*1979 , , A Dry White Season , Vintage 1998, p. 149:
(informal, South Africa) A person who is a member of a colourfully dressed dancing troupe in Cape Town during New Year celebrations.
(ethnic slur) A coonass.
(Southern US, colloquial) To hunt racoons.
(Southern US, colloquial) To crawl while straddling, especially in crossing a creek.
* Roger Martin, “The Parson Goes A-Fishing”, Outing , W. B. Holland, volume LXIX, page 216:
* 1957 , The Arkansas Historical Quarterly , volume XVI, Arkansas Historical Association:
* 1982 , Edwin Van Syckle, The River Pioneers'', ''Early Days on Grays Harbor , Pacific Search Press, page 186:
(Georgia, colloquial) To fish by noodling, by feeling for large fish in underwater holes.
(African American Vernacular English) For an African American, to play the dated stereotype of a black fool for an audience, particularly including Caucasians.
* 1994 , Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks'', ''An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films , page 234:
* 1999 , Nelson George, Elevating the Game'', ''Black Men and Basketball , U of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0803270852, page 52:
* 2005 , Kermit Ernest Campbell, “gettin’ our groove on”'', ''rhetoric, language, and literacy for the hip hop generation , Wayne State University Press, ISBN 081432925X, page 80:
* 2006 , A. Khaulid, The Great Book of Fire , Damon Hunter, ISBN 1427602417, page 142:
(Southern US, colloquial, dated) To steal.
* 1940 , John W. “Jack” Ganzhorn, I’ve Killed Men , Robert Hale Limited, page 58:
* 1948 , John Donald Kingsley, The Antioch Review , volume VIII:
* 1968 , Bill Adler (compiler), Jay David (editor), Growing Up Black , Morrow, page 200:
* 2006 , Timothy M. Gay, Tris Speaker'', ''The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend , U of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0803222068, page 37:
(British, uncountable) The main cereal plant grown for its grain in a given region, such as oats in parts of Scotland and Ireland, and wheat or barley in England and Wales.
*
* '>citation
* {{quote-book, 1909, Johann David Wyss (Susannah Mary Paull, translator), The Swiss Family Robinson, page=462, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=0gUCAAAAQAAJ
, passage= I found that we had nearly a hundred bushels of corn , including wheat, maize, and barley, to add to our store.}}
(US, Canada, Australia, uncountable) Maize, a grain crop of the species Zea mays .
* {{quote-book, 1809, Edward Augustus Kendall, Travels Through the Northern Parts of the United States
, passage=The planting or sowing of maize, exclusively called corn , was just accomplished on the Town Hill, when I reached it.}}
A grain or seed, especially of a cereal crop.
A small, hard particle.
* Bishop Hall:
* Beaumont and Fletcher:
(US, Canada) To granulate; to form a substance into grains.
(US, Canada) To preserve using coarse salt, e.g. corned beef
(US, Canada) To provide with corn (typically maize; or, in Scotland, oats) for feed.
To render intoxicated.
A type of callus, usually on the feet or hands.
* Shakespeare
(US, Canada) Something (e.g. acting, humour, music, or writing) which is deemed old-fashioned or intended to induce emotion.
* 1975 , Tschirlie, Backpacker magazine,
* 1986 , Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave, Women in Comedy? ,
* 2007 , Bob L. Cox, Fiddlin' Charlie Bowman: an East Tennessee old-time music pioneer and his musical family ,
(uncountable) short for corn snow . A type of granular snow formed by repeated melting and re-freezing, often in mountain spring conditions.
As nouns the difference between coon and corn
is that coon is (informal|chiefly|southern us) a raccoon while corn is drinking horn, flagon.As a verb coon
is (southern us|colloquial) to hunt racoons.coon
English
Noun
(en noun)- How about a glen bong for you and your 'coon ?
- ‘Listen, Mr Du Toit,’ he said at last, in an obvious effort to sound light-hearted. ‘Why go to all this trouble for the sake of a bloody coon ?’
Derived terms
* coon cat * coonhound * coon hound * coonskin * coon's ageVerb
(en verb)- There is a little ledge low on the face of the cliff, and by this with careful “cooning ” one may reach a recession in the rock which makes a lovely arm chair.
- 2 o'clock we float up to Duvall's landing—high bluff, store house, and a few dwelling houses. Here the fleet stops. Now for a canter through the woods, cooning logs, and waiding sloughs. Slosh across a small prairie.
- “Advertising” was one problem for frontier women. Another was having to “coon ” across a fallen tree that had been felled and limbed to bridge a canyon or gully.
- Rather than cooning or tomming it up to please whites... the black comic characters joked or laughed or acted the fool with one another. Or sometimes they used humor combatively to outwit the white characters.
- If any other forties figure paralleled this humorous, graceful man in appeal it was the dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who, like the Trotter, funneled his extraordinary physical gifts into mass entertainment for whites yet remarkably, considering the time, avoided cooning .
- From the classic toasts to the dirty dozens to the early blues50 and now to gangsta rap lyrics—why not consider it all just a bunch of n****** cooning for the white man’s delight and dollars?
- Then the warrior appeared, in a manner that was dead serious as a heart attack wearing a baseball cap. Then came the sidekick, a jet black madman dancing, and almost cooning out of the shadows that cancelled him.
- Cooning water-melons [sic. ] was a common custom, and young people would go out at night on such parties. To prevent any raids on our melon patch Grandfather set a trap alarm—which brought disaster.
- He kept on buying and selling horses, he said, sometimes paying for them in bogus, and sometimes cooning them. It was true he helped Malcolm Burnham break into Fred Able’s store
- In the summertime, at night, in addition to all the other things we did, some of us boys would slip out down the road, or across the pastures and go “cooning ” watermelons.
- Tris and his gang loved to prowl around at night, “cooning melons,” as Speaker put it in a 1920 interview. By all accounts, young Master Speaker was a handful.
Derived terms
* coon itQuotations
* (English Citations of "coon")References
* 2005 , John R. Waldman, 100 Weird Ways to Catch Fish , Stackpole Books, ISBN 0811731790 Regional Englishcorn
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (m), from (etyl) , and (etyl) (m).Noun
(en-noun)citation
- He paid her the nominal fee of two corns of barley.
- corn of sand
- a corn of powder
Derived terms
* corn bunting * cornflour * cornmeal * cornstarch * peppercorn * sweetcornSee also
(other words for grain) * barley * cereal * grain * maize * oats * rye * wheatVerb
(en verb)- to corn gunpowder
- Corn the horses.
- ale strong enough to corn one
Etymology 2
From (etyl) (m) (modern (etyl) (m)). (wikipedia corn)Noun
(en noun)- Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes / Unplagued with corns , will have a bout with you.
Synonyms
* clavusHyponyms
* callusEtymology 3
This use was first used in 1932, as corny, something appealing to country folk.Noun
(-)- He had a sharp wit, true enough, but also a good, healthy mountaineer's love of pure corn , the slapstick stuff, the in-jokes that get funnier with every repetition and never amuse anybody who wasn't there.
- There were lots of jokes on the show and they were pure corn , but the audience didn't mind.
- The bulk of this humor was pure corn , but as hillbilly material it was meant to be that way.