cornflour

«cornflour» in Mova's school dictionary: a fine white powder made from maize (corn), used in… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (cornflour — uncountable) — UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ; US and Canada say «cornstarch»

meaning for a pupil

1) Cornflour is a fine white powder made from maize (corn), used in cooking to make sauces, soups and gravy thicker. tree →

2) In the US, «corn flour» can also mean flour ground from whole corn, which is different. tree →

sense in the lessons

In cooking at home and school, a spoon of cornflour mixed with cold water thickens a sauce. In science lessons, cornflour mixed with water makes «oobleck», a strange slime that is hard when you hit it and runny when you pour it — a non-Newtonian fluid. Recipes from the US will say «cornstarch».

examples

• Mix the cornflour with cold water before adding it to the gravy. tree →
• Cornflour makes the sauce thick and shiny. tree →
• We made slime with cornflour and water. tree →
• The oobleck went hard when I punched it. tree →
• US recipes call cornflour «cornstarch». tree →
• Cornflour is gluten-free. tree →
• Dust the table with cornflour so the icing does not stick. tree →

note

Uncountable: «a tablespoon of cornflour». Trap: UK «cornflour» = US «cornstarch»; US «cornmeal» is something else (yellow and gritty). Always mix it with cold water first, or it goes lumpy.

In the corpora

• Some things are tricky: toothpaste, ketchup and cornflour slime behave like a solid one moment and a liquid the next.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «cornflour» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.