corn dab
- noun
- /kɔrn dæb/
- US
:
tortita de maíz
- His grandmother taught him how to make perfect corn dabs every Sunday.
Examples
-
She served hot corn dabs with butter at breakfast.
-
A plate of corn dabs sat on the kitchen table, fresh from the skillet.
-
I had a delicious corn dab for breakfast.
-
The restaurant serves the best corn dabs in town.
-
A plate of corn dabs sat on the kitchen table, fresh from the skillet.
-
She served hot corn dabs with butter at breakfast.
-
His grandmother taught him how to make perfect corn dabs every Sunday.
Synonyms
42
2.4
A bread made from cornmeal usually served warm with butter
25
9.1
A small oval corn bread cake often baked or fried in Southern cooking
3
1.0
A small cake made from cornmeal like cornbread
1
2.0
A flat food like a pancake made from cornmeal and cooked on a pan
A small oval cornmeal cake usually baked or fried
A small flat cake made from ground corn, usually fried or baked and served as a side
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a small, oval-shaped cake of cornbread' is directly derivable from 'corn' (maize/ingredient) combined with 'dab' (a small lump or amount), so a learner who knows both constituents can infer a small piece of cornbread. This compositional ingredient+portion pattern is common in English food vocabulary (and cross-linguistically), making the expression transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Corn dab may come from dropping a small dab of corn batter into a hot pan, which makes a tiny, oval cake. So the name came to mean a small, oval cornbread cake.