Flour

How to spell flour

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flour

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flour mean?

1. nounA fine powder made by grinding wheat or other grain, used in baking and cooking.
2. verbTo coat or sprinkle something with fine ground grain.

Flour in a sentence

• noun

  The recipe calls for two cups of plain flour and a pinch of salt.

• verb

  Lightly flour the chicken pieces before frying them.

• noun

  She dusted the work surface with flour before rolling out the dough.

• verb

  You should flour the cake tin so the sponge does not stick.

Where does flour come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Flour is, remarkably, the very same word as flower, and the two were not consistently distinguished in spelling until the nineteenth century. Both descend from the Latin flos (stem flor-), meaning 'flower' or 'blossom', which reached English through the Old French flour and flor in the medieval period. The connection lies in an old figurative sense: the 'flower' of any substance was its finest, choicest part, so 'the flower of the meal' meant the best, most refined portion left after grinding and sifting the wheat. Over time that phrase was shortened simply to flour, and the spelling gradually split off to mark the culinary meaning as distinct from the botanical one. Because the divorce between the two spellings is so recent and the pronunciation is identical, flour and flower remain one of the classic homophone traps in English.

How the word is built

• flour (the fine ground meal of wheat, originally 'the flower' or finest part of the grain)

Words that sound like flour

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• flower: The colourful blooming part of a plant, often grown or given for its beauty or scent.