Re: "corn" in early modern English

prr wrote:
I am constantly reading about the English corn laws, etc. of a few
centuries ago. I looked it in an online dictionary and it said that
it could refer to wheat, but then also said that it might mean simply
whatever was the most common grain in any given country, which could
be oats or rice, etc. Or does it refer to any grain at all? Which of
these understandings is correct?
In most parts of England, corn has always meant wheat. In Scotland and Ireland it usually means oats; in the USA, maize. However, in Britain "cornflour" is what Americans call corn starch, normally made from maize. I've never come across it used to denote rice; I don't know whether rice was subject under the Corn Laws to the same import restrictions as other grains. I suspect it might have been.

Here's what the Oxford English dictionary says (in part)about "corn":


3. a. collective sing. The seed of the cereal or farinaceous plants as a produce of agriculture; grain.
As a general term the word includes all the cereals, wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, rice, etc., and, with qualification (as black corn, pulse corn), is extended to leguminous plants, as pease, beans, etc., cultivated for food. Locally, the word, when not otherwise qualified, is often understood to denote that kind of cereal which is the leading crop of the district; hence in the greater part of England ‘corn’ is = wheat, in North Britain and Ireland = oats; in the U.S. the word, as short for Indian corn, is restricted to maize (see 5).
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