1570s, "full of corn, pertaining to corn, from corn (1). Chaucer used it of ale (late 14c.), perhaps to mean "malty." Amer.Eng. slang "old-fashioned, sentimental," is from 1932 (first attested in "Melody Maker"), perhaps originally "something appealing to country folk."
mod. having to do with simple-minded, overdrawn humor. (Alludes to rural or folksy style.) : This corny dialogue has to be revised before I'll act in this play.
mod. having to do with overdone sentiment. : The love scenes were your corny hands-off-the-naughty-parts events, but nobody laughed.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Example sentences
Corny, but there is some validity to that statement.
It was corny in the original, but got better and better over the years.
The second rewarding aspect of the job probably sounds corny but it's true: teaching.
Everybody likes to collect now, so it's kind of corny.
The group merges dance music from all over the world without the results sounding at all forced or corny.
It was an old gag, and so corny it would make you groan.
But the corny side of me is what they wouldn't know.
The film's guileless, heartfelt style veers at times perilously close to corny, but the superb cast dares you to mock.
They can suffer from simplistic premises and too many corny jokes, but his characters are always richly, sympathetically drawn.
But it doesn't venture into corny or sickly sweet terrain.