flour

• flower (obsolete)

Spelled (until about 1830) and meaning "flower" in the sense of flour being the "finest portion of ground grain" (compare French fleur de farine, fine fleur). For more see flower.

The U.S. standard of identity comes from 21CFR137.105.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈflaʊə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈflaʊɚ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -aʊə(r)
• Homophone: flower (for people who pronounce flour as two syllables or flower as one)

flour (usually uncountable, plural flours)

1. Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and pastry.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess‎:

     Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […]  A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.

2. (US standards of identity) The food made by grinding and bolting cleaned wheat (not durum or red durum) until it meets specified levels of fineness, dryness, and freedom from bran and germ, also containing any of certain enzymes, ascorbic acid, and certain bleaching agents.
3. Powder of other material.

   wood flour, produced by sanding wood

   mustard flour

4. Obsolete form of flower.

   that nobody is wished to see my dead body. & that no murnurs walk behind me at my funeral. & that no flours be planted on my grave. — Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

• (U.S. standard of identity): smeddum, plain flour, wheat flour, white flour

• (ground material): meal

• self-raising flour, self-rising flour

• bran
• farina
• meal
• smeddum

flour (third-person singular simple present flours, present participle flouring, simple past and past participle floured)

1. (transitive) To apply flour to something; to cover with flour.
2. (transitive) To reduce to flour.
3. (intransitive) To break up into fine globules of mercury in the amalgamation process.

• fluor, fluor-, four L, furol, orful, rufol

• flowr

• IPA^(key): [fluːɹ]

flour

1. flower, choice (best of a collective)

flour m (plural flourys)

1. (botany) flower
2. flower (the best of a collective)

• blejen, bleujen, blejan
• flowren

From Anglo-Norman flur, from Latin flōrem. More at flower.

flour (plural flours)

1. flower
   • 14th c. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. General Prologue: 3-4.

     And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

     Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

• Scots: flouer, flour, floor
• English: flower, flour

• flor
• hlor

From Old Occitan flor, from Latin flōs, flōrem, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“flower, blossom”).

flour f (plural flours)

1. (Mistralian) flower

flour f (oblique plural flours, nominative singular flour, nominative plural flours)

1. Alternative form of flor
   • 1377, Bernard de Gordon, Fleur de lis de medecine (a.k.a. lilium medicine), page 136 of this essay:

     non pasque les flours touchent a la chair nue car ce seroit doubte que les porres ne se clousissent et de fievre putride.

     but not that the flowers should touch the naked flesh because this may cause the pores to shut with a putrid fever.

• (Rumantsch Grischun, Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Puter, Vallader) flur
• (Sursilvan) flura

From Latin flōs, flōrem, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“flower, blossom”).

flour f (plural flours)

1. (Surmiran) flower

• flouer

From Middle English flour, from Anglo-Norman flur. More at English flower.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfluːr/

flour (plural flours)

1. a flower
2. a bouquet (bunch of flowers)
3. (uncountable) Wheat flour

flour (third-person singular present flours, present participle flourin, past flourt, past participle flourt)

1. to embroider