flour
pronunciation
How to pronounce flour in British English:
UK [ˈflaʊə(r)]
How to pronounce flour in American English:
US [ˈflaʊər]
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- Noun:
- fine powdery foodstuff obtained by grinding and sifting the meal of a cereal grain
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- Verb:
- cover with flour
- convert grain into flour
Word Origin
- flour
- flour: [13] Etymologically, flour is the same word as flower. It originally meant the ‘flower’, or ‘finest part’, of ground grain, and hence eventually just ‘ground (and more or less sifted) grain’. The distinction in spelling between flour and flower did not emerge until the late 18th century, and the spelling flower for ‘flour’ persisted into the early 19th century.=> flower
- flour (n.)
- "finer portion of ground grain," mid-13c., from flower (n.), and maintaining its older spelling, on the notion of flour as the "finest part" of meal, perhaps as the flower is the finest part of the plant or the fairest plant of the field (compare French fleur de farine), as distinguished from the coarser parts (meal (n.2)). Old French flor also meant both "a flower, blossom" and "meal, fine flour." The English word also was spelled flower until flour became the accepted form c. 1830 to end confusion. Flour-knave "miller's helper" is from c. 1300.
- flour (v.)
- "to sprinkle with flour," 1650s, from flour (n.). Meaning "convert (wheat) into flour" is from 1828. Related: Floured; flouring.
Example
- 1. Tortillas are made from finely ground corn or flour .
- 2. Among flour beetles , males routinely force themselves on other males .
- 3. But adding some whole grain flour to chocolate puffs and rainbow-colored loops doesn 't make the cereal a nutritional all-star .
- 4. Both practices yield too much flour .
- 5. My teacher says that we use grain to make flour .