Hominy

//ˈhɒmɪni// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A food made from hulled corn (maize) kernels soaked in lye water, rinsed, then cooked and eaten; or, the rinsed kernels are dried and coarsely ground into hominy grits. uncountable, usually

    "Then his plate was put before him: hominy grits and a scrap of bacon. He wanted to cry, like a child: ‘But, Mama, it's my birthday!’"

  2. 2
    hulled corn with the bran and germ removed wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
nixtamalnixtamalvegetable

Example

More examples

"Pozole is my favorite Mexican soup; both the pork and the hominy are delicious."

Etymology

First recorded in 1629. From Powhatan ("Virginia Algonquian"), though the exact source word is in question: suggestions include uskatahomen, appuminnéonash (“parched corn”), and rokohamin (“parched, ground corn”), the last yielding also the unclipped rockahominy.

Related phrases

hominy snow

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.