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Lindsey Davis, for those who don't know, writes detective stories set in Flavian Rome. Published on both sides of the Atlantic, she has this to say to a North American reader who queried her use of British English: http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk/rants.htm#corn . She mentions elsewhere that her USn publisher changed the title of the first novel in her series from "The Silver Pigs" to "Silver Pigs" on the grounds that USn readers would find the title with the definite article "a little heavy". Would our USn members care to explain or comment? Bingley
Bingley
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All right, whoa, hold up--first--is she saying in her reply, that in England corn is what we call wheat? Secondly--I still don't get the expression 'ears of corn on his head'. Even picturing wheat, why on earth would anyone wear wheat on his head? And if she meant the corn = outdated humor, why would she say the 'ears of' part? Why wouldn't she simply say that his humor was always corny, or something like that*? I was envisioning some sort of weird hat, maybe along the lines of the Cat in the Hat striped high-toppers that were popular with kids here in recent years.
As to the title--now that I think about it, I'd be more inclined to pick up a book called Silver Pigs than I would one called The Silver Pigs. The former just sounds more intriguing, somehow--makes me want to see what these silver pigs are like. But I can't say why!
* Secret--I do know it's an expression; just wanted to point out how it sounds strange, to my "ears"! :-)
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Yes, to me corn definitely means wheat. The yellow stuff originating in the Americas, I would call sweet corn.
I assume we are meant to envisage the Arval Brethren as wearing something like a wreath woven out of ears of corn.
Bingley
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A) I haven't the foggiest notion what that editor is driving at. I see no difference between Silver Pigs and The Silver Pigs.
2) We have sweet corn, but it is distinguished from field corn. The former is meant for human consumption and the latter for animals. They are both maize, which is how I thought the Brits would refer to what USns call corn. Or either that or Indian corn, one.
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Of course, both Jackie and Bingley are correct--
Corn is the term for the native or common grain of a place.. In the US it is maize, In other places it is wheat, in other places rye, or barley, or oats.. we in US sometimes forget that-- and think corn as being specific to maize, rather than specificly the corn of the americas, i.e., maize!
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Did she consider that the ears of corn these Roman folks were wearing about their heads was perhaps not wheat, but barley?
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Corn is the term for the native or common grain of a place. In the US it is maize, In other places it is wheat, in other places rye, or barley, or oats. we in US sometimes forget that-- and think corn as being specific to maize
I was suprised to read this, and upon LIU have my doubts.
Per bartleby, each of the grain-names noted refers to a is a distinct genus:
corn: 1a. Any of numerous cultivated forms of a widely grown, usually tall annual cereal grass (Zea mays)
wheat: Any of various annual cereal grasses of the genus Triticum ... especially T. aestivum
rye: 1. A cereal grass (Secale cereale) widely cultivated for its grain.
barley: 1. A grass in the genus Hordeum, ... 2. The grain of H. vulgare or its varieties,
oat: 1. often oats ... a. Any of various grasses of the genus Avena, especially A. sativa, widely cultivated for their edible grains.
Bartleby does also give the above-blue definition for "corn", but only as a teriary and "chiefly British" meaning.
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I don't think I can really go along with the notion that corn = wheat in England. I've never seen any literary evidence of such a confusion.
Interestingly enough, there was certainly no confusion between wheat and Indian corn in the 1840s. During the Irish Famine (1844-1849) Ireland was still exporting bumper crops of wheat to England and other overseas markets while at the same time importing quantities of maize from the US to feed the starving Irish. Not enough of course, but more than your average laissez-faire government of the period actually wanted to provide from the public purse.
What little they did provide didn't do the Irish much good anyway. Without wanting to have a swipe at the Irish, they simply didn't know what to do with it, potatoes being the staple prior to the blight.
They tried boiling it, parching it, roasting it and even eating it raw. The average peasant family wouldn't have been able to grind it even if they had known that they should do so. Grinding stones weren't exactly thick on the ground, although at the time cyst nematode certainly was.
It caused a lot of illness, including perforated stomach linings because, as we all know today, maize is not broken down by the human gut without considerable pre-processing. And even where it didn't cause sickness it still didn't provide much nitrition because it wasn't digested properly.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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