kernel: [OE] Etymologically, a kernel is a ‘little seed’. Old English corn, ancestor of modern English corn, meant ‘seed, grain’, and its diminutive form cyrnel was applied to ‘pips’ (now obsolete), to ‘seeds’ (a sense which now survives only in the context of cereals), and to the ‘inner part of nuts, fruit stones, etc’. => corn
kernel (n.)
Old English cyrnel "seed, kernel, pip," from Proto-Germanic *kurnilo- (cognates: Middle High German kornel, Middle Dutch cornel), from the root of corn "seed, grain" (see corn (n.1)) + -el, diminutive suffix. Figurative sense of "core or central part of anything" is from 1550s.