# flower

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

## Noun

1. The colorful, often scented part of a plant from which seeds or fruit develop, often cut with its stem for decoration or as a gift.
   - Simple: The colorful part of a plant, often with a nice smell, which people pick and give as gifts.
   - _Each flower along the path gave off a faint, sweet scent._
   - _The orchid produced a single flower streaked with deep purple._
2. A plant that bears blooms, especially one that is small and lacks woody stems.
   - Simple: A plant that grows blooms, usually a small, soft one rather than a tree or bush.
   - _They dug up every flower before the frost arrived._
   - _A wild flower had taken root in a crack in the wall._
4. The condition of a plant when it is bearing blooms.
   - Simple: The time when a plant has its blooms open.
   - _The orchard came into flower a week earlier than usual._
   - _Visitors arrive when the lavender is in full flower._
5. The dried flower buds of the cannabis plant, used as a recreational or medicinal drug, as distinct from concentrates or edibles. *(slang)*
   - Simple: The dried buds of the cannabis plant, used as a drug.
   - _She prefers flower to the stronger concentrates her friends use._
   - _The dispensary weighs out flower by the gram._
6. The finest part or best members of something, or its finest and most flourishing time.
   - Simple: The best people or part of something, or the best time in someone's life or work.
   - _The flower of the city's artists gathered for the festival._
   - _An entire generation, the flower of the country, was lost to the war._
8. Due credit or public recognition for a person's contributions or worth.
   - Simple: Praise or credit given to someone for what they have done.
   - _Critics did not give the director his flowers until years after the film had flopped._
   - _In her speech, she gave her longtime coach his flowers, crediting him with every title she had won._
9. A person regarded as delicate, fragile, or overly sensitive.
   - Simple: A person who gets upset easily and seems weak or too sensitive.
   - _Don't treat me like some delicate flower; I can handle honest feedback on my work._
   - _She's no delicate flower, and she handled the harsh criticism with ease._
11. A euphemistic term for the vulva, especially the labia majora. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A polite word for a woman's outer private parts.
   - _The erotic verses lingered over her flower with deliberate delicacy._
   - _The old drinking song never names her body outright, but everyone laughs at the line about her 'sweet flower.'_
12. A figure of speech or ornamental turn of phrase used to embellish one's style.
   - Simple: A pretty or fancy phrase used to make writing or speech sound nicer.
   - _The orator embellished his address with every flower of rhetoric he could muster._
   - _Victorian prose often overflows with flowers of speech that modern readers find tiresome._

## Verb

3. To produce blooms; to come into bloom.
   - Simple: To grow and open new blooms.
   - _Most desert plants flower only after heavy rain._
   - _The roses flowered late this year because of the cold._
7. To reach a state of full growth, success, or achievement.
   - Simple: To grow into your best or fullest form.
   - _Under her mentorship, his confidence flowered into real leadership._
   - _Great ideas flower when curious minds work together._
10. To decorate something with painted or printed pictures of flowers.
   - Simple: To decorate something with pictures of flowers.
   - _The guest room still had its original wallpaper, faded but flowered with climbing violets._
   - _The cafe's old cups were flowered with tiny hand-painted poppies, and no two were exactly alike._

## Noun

13. Something that flows, especially a river, parsed as 'flow-er,' one that flows. *(rare)* (pronounced: US say "FLOH-ur" /ˈfloʊɚ/; UK say "FLOH-uh" /ˈfləʊə/)
   - Simple: A thing that flows, especially a river.
   - _In cryptic crosswords, a clue that mentions a flower often points to a river._
   - _Some scholars read the old river name as 'swift flower', meaning a fast-running stream._
16. Finely ground meal from wheat or other grain used in baking: the older spelling of modern flour. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Fine powder made by grinding wheat or other grain, used for baking.
17. The blood and tissue discharged from the womb during menstruation. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: The blood a woman loses from her body during her monthly period.

## Verb

14. To come off as a fine powder through sublimation, depositing on a cooler surface. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: To turn into a fine powder as a vapor cools onto a surface.
15. To froth and ferment gently, as new beer or cider does in its early days. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: To bubble and foam gently while fermenting, as new beer does.

## Other meanings

- (noun) Decorative pieces of cast type, used chiefly to build borders around pages, cards, and similar printed matter.
- (noun) A fine powder condensed directly from a vapor by sublimation, now found mainly in names such as flowers of sulfur.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–12, 14–17** — It goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰleh₃-, meaning "to thrive, bloom," which passed through Proto-Italic into Latin flōs, accusative flōrem. Anglo-Norman flur carried it into Middle English as flour. The word partly pushed out the native Old English blostma, a cognate that survives as blossom, and its doublets are fleur, flor, flour, bloom, and blossom.
**Meaning 13** — This form is built from the verb "flow" plus the suffix "-er".

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