farina

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a fine meal or flour made from cereal grain or other starchy vegetable material, especially one cooked as a breakfast cereal or pudding

   She stirred the farina into hot milk until it formed a smooth cereal.

2. 2
   noun

   a powdery or mealy substance, including the pale protective secretion found on some plants

   A delicate layer of farina coated the primrose leaves.

Borrowed from Latin farina, 'meal or flour,' from far, 'spelt.' The word first denoted finely ground vegetable material and later specialized in North America for a wheat breakfast cereal. Portuguese farinha, used by Darwin for cassava meal, descends from the same Latin source but is not an English spelling variant.

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