Flourishing

How to spell flourishing

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce flourishing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flourishing mean?

1. adjectiveDeveloping rapidly and successfully; thriving and full of vigour.
2. verbPresent participle of flourish: growing or developing in a healthy, vigorous way.

Flourishing in a sentence

• adjective

  The town has a flourishing market that draws shoppers every weekend.

• verb

  The herbs on the windowsill are flourishing in the morning sun.

• adjective

  After two profitable years she ran a flourishing catering company.

• verb

  With steady investment the small charity is flourishing at last.

Where does flourishing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb florere, meaning 'to bloom' or 'to flower', which was itself built on the noun flos (stem flor-) meaning 'flower'. The verb passed into Old French as florir, whose extended stem floriss- supplied the English form, and Middle English speakers adopted it in the 1300s as 'florisshen', meaning literally to put out blossom and, by natural extension, to thrive or prosper. The figurative leap from a plant in full bloom to a person, business, or community doing well was an easy one, and it has dominated the modern meaning ever since. The same flos root flowers throughout English in words such as 'floral', 'florist', 'florid', and even 'flour', which was once 'the flower of the meal', the finest part. That shared ancestry explains the spelling trap precisely: the first syllable is 'flour', the very same letters as the baking ingredient, not the more phonetic-looking 'flur'.

How the word is built

• flour- (from Latin florere/flos: to bloom, flower)
• -ish (verb-forming suffix via Old French)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)