flour

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   cover with flour

   flour fish or meat before frying it

2. 2
   noun

   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.

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   Powder of other material.

   mustard flour

4. 4
   noun

   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.

5. 5
   noun

   fine powdery foodstuff obtained by grinding and sifting the meal of a cereal grain

6. 6
   verb

   convert grain into flour

7. 7
   noun

   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.

8. 8
   verb

   To apply flour to something; to cover with flour.

Etymology

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). Doublet of fleur, flor, and flower. Partially displaced native meal. The U.S. standard of identity comes from 21CFR137.105.