cornmeal
/ˈkɔɹnˌmil/noun
cornmeal is a noun meaning “Dried corn (maize) milled (ground) to a meal, especially a coarse one” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-R-N-M-E-A-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of cornmeal is cornmeals.
What does cornmeal mean?
noun
- 1
Dried corn (maize) milled (ground) to a meal, especially a coarse one.
She made a kind of polenta from cornmeal and chicken broth, with some cheese sprinkled on top.
- 2
archaicAny cereal grain meal or flour.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce cornmeal?
- US /ˈkɔɹnˌmil/
- UK /ˈkɔːnˌmiːl/
Cornmeal has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-cornmeal.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of cornmeal
- cornmeals plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cornmeal?
Cornmeal appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 54,808th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Cornmeal in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense dried corn milled to a coarse meal:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | farine de maïs |
| German | Maisgrieß |
| Portuguese | fubá |
| Spanish | harina de maíz |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does cornmeal come from?
From corn + meal.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).