flint corn
- noun
- /flɪnt kɔrn/
- Specialized
:
maíz de grano duro
- Many Native American communities traditionally cultivated flint corn for its durability and suitability for making meals.
Hence why Flint corn makes a really good kind of binder or malleable, moldable dough that you can turn into tortillas or whatever.
- Hence why Flint corn makes a really good kind of binder or malleable, moldable dough that you can turn into tortillas or whatever.
Examples
-
Six Nations people used some fifteen species of corn, which included some sixty varieties of sweet corn, twenty-five varieties of popping corn, five varieties of flint corn, and six varieties of bread corn.
Academic text (2004) -
The farmer decided to plant flint corn this year because it has a hard outer layer that protects the kernels.
-
Worst of all, mice could eat this corn easier than the stone-hard flint corn.
Fiction book (1995) -
Sitting there among the ears of drying flint corn, she watched Rodrigo joking with Kadoh and repairing his saddle.
Fiction book (1995) -
Hence why Flint corn makes a really good kind of binder or malleable, moldable dough that you can turn into tortillas or whatever.
-
He watched the women mash swollen, soft kernels of flint corn that had been soaked in lime water to remove their hard shells.
Fiction book (1995) -
She used flint corn to make delicious tortillas, enjoying the unique flavor it provided.
Synonyms
522
1.0
A tall plant with large yellow seeds used for food
1
4.2
A type of corn with hard kernels in many colors used for decoration or food
A type of corn with hard outer kernels often ground to make cornmeal
A type of corn with a hard outer layer and a soft inside
A type of corn with hard outer kernel and softer inner part
How Soft
Surface Forms
Morphology
flint + corn
The compound is a straightforward adjective+noun composition: if a learner knows 'flint' (a hard stone) and 'corn' (maize), they can infer 'flint corn' denotes corn with a flint-like hard outer layer. This is a regular descriptive naming pattern found across languages rather than an idiom or metaphorical shift, so the meaning is directly derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Flint corn comes from the hard, shiny kernels that reminded people of flint stone. Because each corn kernel has a very hard outer layer, the cobs last a long time and were used for 'food' and 'decoration', so the name now refers to this tough kind of corn.