Corns

A note on the heading

Plain sense

The hard, horny thickening of skin on a foot or hand, treated like a wart by eating it away.

What the entries treat

Two claims, both with a sentence, both with warts beside: Houseleek’s juice “takes away worts and corns in the hands or feet, being often bathed therewith, and the skin and leaves being laid on them afterwards”; the Willow’s bark burnt to ash and mixed with vinegar “takes away warts, corns, and superfluous flesh, being applied to the place”.

Where the word comes from

Not the grain. Middle English corne, Old French corn, Latin cornū “horn”, a doublet of horn; the grain is a native Germanic word. Romeo and Juliet has “Ladies that haue their toes Vnplagu’d with Cornes”.

Today’s words

corn; clavus (its Latin name, still used); heloma; callus (its broader kin) — the modern term names the same thing.

How it reads today

Reads as it did. A corn is a cone of hardened dead skin at a pressure point, “a hard tapering root that is directed inward”; a callus is the flat kind. The Latin clavus, “nail”, is the corn’s Latin name and still used; heloma is the modern medical word.

References

Wiktionary, s.v. “corn” (accessed 2026-10-28): Etymology 2, “Inherited from Middle English corne, from Old French corn (modern French cor), from Latin cornū”, doublet of horn; sense “A type of callus, usually on the feet or hands”; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, “Ladies that haue their toes / Vnplagu’d with Cornes”; the grain (Etymology 1) is inherited from Old English and Proto-Germanic. Wikipedia, “Corn (medicine)” (accessed 2026-10-28): “A corn or clavus … is an often painful, cone-shaped, inwardly directed callus of dead skin”; “corns are defined by having a hard tapering root that is directed inward”; “The modern medical word for a corn is Greek heloma”.

ThinkDeep333, 2026-10-28 · draft, not yet checked. Offered beside Culpeper’s heading, never in its place; nothing here says whether a plant works.