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 Originally Posted By: Faldage
Pearl Barley won't you please grow pone.


thought that was Bill Barley.


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 Originally Posted By: BranShea
 Quote:
Originally Posted By: BranShea
pearl barley
TEd is going to have so much fun with this one...
so much fun with this one... But Etaoin, you don't think you'll be let of the hook that easy, do you? Declare yourself unless you're having a gross indecency in store.


what? no hook for me. nothing came to mind for me, other than I knew there was a good pun in there somewhere, and TEd's the man for the job.

Fald's was good, but I am in shock that he did a pun.


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corn=barley.

To use the words of Astérix : "Ils sont fous les Anglais". \:\)
Kidding.

But Webster gives:Date: "corn" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1010.But at that time they used corn for all sorts of grains. As we still use 'koren'
for all types of grass related grains.
 Quote:
Originally Posted By: Faldage
Pearl Barley won't you please grow pone.

I'm glad you're happy with it. (etaoin) It should be explained to me were it not that a pun explained is no longer a pun.
So no use explaining.


Last edited by BranShea; 04/21/08 08:35 PM. Reason: sloppy text
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 Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
What's barley got to do with corn?

In the UK (and some of the Commonwealth countries) barley is a corn.


Never heard that one before. It's certainly not known as a corn in Australia. Here corn is maize and nothing else. Barley is barley.

One thing they both have in common is that they can be used to make alcohol.

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My English teacher was a New Zealander and he didn't use barley to mean any sort of corn. He did introduce me to barley sugars though.

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corn

Maybe it's just in the UK (link and link). Corn is a generic term for that which we in the States call grain. Maize is what we call corn. Corn also refers specifically to the seed of some plants: hence barleycorn (link).


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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 Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
corn

Maybe it's just in the UK (link and link). Corn is a generic term for that which we in the States call grain. Maize is what we call corn. Corn also refers specifically to the seed of some plants: hence barleycorn (link).


Perhaps it's dialectical even within the UK?

We are the same. Grain refers almost exclusively to the seed of grass-like plants such as wheat, barley, sorghum, etc. We don't use the word 'corn' in that generic sense but only to refer to maize.

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corn (in the sense of generic grain) is also used in US--corn bread can be a bread made with out yeast (quick bread) and maize.

but in many ethnic bakeries, corn bread is whole grain bread--often multi grain bread. OK, so it not universally used in US or even in NYC, but i realize that in many contexts, corn bread isn't some sort of quick bread or even anadama bread, (corn/wheat/molasses) but a coarse multi grain bread.

and barleycorn? i can think of a half dozen irish bars with that word in their name!--and i think you could find many references to john barleycorn or bars with the word barley corn up and down the eastern seaboard (i have done much drinking in my travels.. so i can't speak for chicago or other cities.. but...

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 Originally Posted By: The Pook


We are the same. Grain refers almost exclusively to the seed of grass-like plants such as wheat, barley, sorghum, etc. We don't use the word 'corn' in that generic sense but only to refer to maize.


If I understood my teachers correctly, the usage in New Zealand is exactly the same, although they seem to use "maize" to refer only to one specific type of "corn", calling the variety grown to be eaten "sweetcorn", and restricting "maize" to the variety groen for making flour or animal feed.

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