Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

corny

UK /ˈkɔːni/ · US /ˈkɔɹni/ adjective

Forms cornier corniest

  1. adjective Boring and unoriginal. “The duct tape and wire was a pretty corny solution.”
  2. adjective Hackneyed or excessively sentimental. “The movie was okay, but the love scene was really corny.”
  3. adjective (African-American Vernacular, slang) Uncool, stupid, lame.
  4. adjective (rare) Containing corn.
  5. adjective (obsolete) Producing corn or grain; furnished with grains of corn.
  6. adjective (obsolete, UK, slang) Tipsy; drunk.
  7. adjective (euphemistic) Horny (sexually aroused; experiencing sexual desire).
  8. adjective Having or pertaining to corns (a type of callus).
  9. adjective (obsolete) Horny; strong, stiff or hard like horn; resembling horn.

Synonyms

humdrum tedious uninteresting banal basic mindless beat blah commonplace bland boring cold colourless drab stuffy dreich drowsy dull dull as dishwater flat bromidic platitudinal platitudinous

Etymology

From Middle English corny, equivalent to corn (“a type of cereal or grain”) + -y. Piecewise doublet of grainy. In the "hackneyed" sense, from "corn catalogue jokes", reputedly low-quality jokes that were formerly printed in mail-order seed catalogues.

From corn (“a type of callus”) + -y. Piecewise doublet of horny.

From Middle French corne + English -y, or from Latin cornu + English -y. Piecewise doublet of horny.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Strong, stiff, or hard, like a horn; resembling horn.
  2. adjective Producing corn or grain; furnished with grains of corn. [R.] "The corny ear." Prior.
  3. adjective Containing corn; tasting well of malt. [R.]

Etymology [L. cornu horn.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “corny”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details