Flowering

How to spell flowering

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce flowering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flowering mean?

1. adjectiveProducing blossoms; of a plant that bears flowers.
2. nounThe process or period during which a plant comes into bloom.

Flowering in a sentence

• adjective

  The garden centre sells dozens of flowering shrubs in spring.

• noun

  The early flowering of the apple trees worried the orchard owner.

• adjective

  She planted a row of flowering cherry trees along the driveway.

• noun

  Warm weather brought on the flowering of the roses weeks ahead of schedule.

Where does flowering come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word flower entered English in the early 1200s from the Old French flour or flor, which in turn came from the Latin flos, with its stem florem, meaning a blossom or the bloom of a plant. The Latin root carried the wider sense of flourishing and being at one's prime, which is why related words like flourish and florid also trace back to it. By adding the native English suffix -ing, English formed flowering, used both as an adjective for plants that produce blossoms and as a verbal noun for the act or season of coming into bloom. The same flos root survives in the names Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and in florist and floral. The spelling trap is the soft, easily dropped middle: writers must keep the full flower before -ing rather than collapsing it to flowring.

How the word is built

• flower (a bloom, from Latin flos/florem)
• -ing (forming adjectives and verbal nouns)