Floor

How to spell floor

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce floor

What does floor mean?

1. nounThe lower surface of a room that you stand and walk on, or one level of a building.
2. verbTo knock someone to the ground, or to leave someone unable to respond through shock or difficulty.

Floor in a sentence

• noun

  The kitchen floor was still wet after she mopped it.

• verb

  One heavy punch was enough to floor his opponent.

• noun

  Their office is on the third floor of the tower.

• verb

  The unexpected question seemed to completely floor the candidate.

Where does floor come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English flor, which meant the ground, a paved surface, or the bottom of something. It traces back to a Germanic root shared with the Dutch vloer and the German Flur (meaning a hallway or field), and ultimately to an old Indo-European root meaning flat or level. The earliest sense was simply the level ground underfoot, and only later did it narrow to the constructed surface inside a building. From that came the idea of a 'floor' as one level of a multi-storey building, and from there the figurative senses, such as the lowest permitted level of a price. The verb meaning 'to knock down' or 'to overwhelm' is a later development, picturing someone laid out flat on the floor. The double o spelling, which is the trap here, simply reflects the long vowel and lines it up with its rhyming neighbour 'door'.

How the word is built

• floor (whole word, from Old English flor: ground, base surface); no separable prefix or suffix