# flour

Pronunciation: US say "FLOW-ur" /ˈflaʊ̯.ɚ/; UK say "FLOW-uh" /ˈflaʊ̯.ə/

## Noun

1. A powder made by grinding cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foods such as soybeans and potatoes, used to bake bread, cakes, and pastries.
   - Simple: A fine powder made by grinding grain such as wheat, used to bake bread and cakes.
   - _Most bread recipes start with flour, water, yeast, and salt._
   - _The bakery grinds its own wheat into flour each morning._
3. Fine powder produced from a material other than cereal grain.
   - Simple: A fine powder made by grinding some material other than grain.
   - _Jewelers polish gemstones with a flour of fine abrasive grit._
   - _The mineral was ground to a flour before being mixed into the glaze._
4. The food produced by grinding and sifting cleaned wheat (not durum) to set standards of fineness and dryness, with bran and germ removed and certain enzymes, ascorbic acid, and bleaching agents permitted.
   - Simple: A food made by grinding cleaned wheat into a fine, dry powder with the bran and germ removed.
   - _The label lists enriched flour treated with ascorbic acid and a bleaching agent._
   - _Commercial bakers buy flour milled to consistent fineness from cleaned, bran-free wheat._

## Verb

2. To cover or coat something with flour.
   - Simple: To cover the surface of something with flour.
   - _Lightly flour the work surface before kneading the dough._
   - _He floured each fillet and laid it in the hot oil._
5. To grind or crush a material into flour.
   - Simple: To grind a material into a fine powder.
   - _Traditional millers flour wheat slowly to avoid scorching it._
   - _The machine flours dried roots into a powder fine enough for baking._
6. Of mercury, to break up into fine globules during the amalgamation process used to extract metals.
   - Simple: Of mercury, to break up into tiny drops during metal refining.
   - _Contaminated mercury tends to flour, scattering into globules too small to gather the precious metal._
   - _When the mercury flours, recovery rates drop sharply._

## Noun

7. Obsolete form of flower. *(obsolete)* — Obsolete form of flower.
   - Simple: Obsolete form of flower. You'll only find this old spelling in very old writing.

## Origin

Until about 1830 this was spelled "flower," in the sense of flour being the "finest portion of ground grain" (compare French fleur de farine). It is a doublet of fleur, flor, and flower, and it partly displaced the native word meal.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/flour (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).