cornfield meet
/ˈkɔɹnˌfild ˌmit/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.53 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
2
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Do you think it's possible for two trains to have a cornfield meet right in the middle of an automatically protected block? Of course it is, if one of the hoggers is drunk or asleep at the throttle […]"
- "One such instance when a conductor failed to follow a prescribed timetable resulted in a head-on smashup on the Long Island Railroad at the end of the Civil War. On August 28, 1865, General Grant and General Sherman collided in a pasture at Jamaica, New York. Five passengers were killed in this cornfield meet."
- "[A] couple of passenger trains staged a cornfield meet in the deep cut on Mount Holly, which the road settled with "gratuities" amounting to $50,000. By this time the Rutland had built up enough financial stability to weather these incidents with a minimum of distress."
- "One hundred years ago, staged railroad accidents were popular events. […] "Head-on Joe" Connolly made a business out of "cornfield meets" holding seventy-three events in thirty-six years."
- "[An 1899 man discovering ragtime:] [N]ow they're writing music that sounds like a cornfield meet."
Etymology
Either from the fact that early train collisions often occurred out in the country alongside a cornfield rather than in a station or siding; or from staged events where two old steam locomotives were purposely run head on at each other, often in an open field, for public entertainment. In the latter idea, the term may jocularly echo field meet as a spectacle in the field involving opposing contestants.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkɔɹnˌfild ˌmit/
- British English: /ˈkɔːnfiːld ˌmiːt/
Usage
- American usage