Also spelled corn-pone
Meanings
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1
noun
chiefly Southern US: a simple cornbread, traditionally made without milk or eggs and baked or fried
The family ate beans with a hot wedge of cornpone.
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2
noun
US informal, sometimes disparaging: a person or thing regarded as stereotypically rural, Southern, or unsophisticated
The critic mistook the speaker's accent for cornpone and ignored her sharp argument.
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3
adj
US informal, sometimes disparaging: rural, old-fashioned, or unsophisticated in style
The campaign relied on cornpone humor to appear folksy.
Thesaurus
Etymology
A compound of corn + pone. Pone entered American English from an Indigenous Virginia Algonquian word for bread, probably through Powhatan. Cornpone first named a plain maize bread and later acquired figurative, sometimes disparaging associations with stereotyped rural Southern culture.