Powder

How to spell powder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce powder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does powder mean?

1. nounA dry substance made up of very fine, loose particles.
2. verbTo cover or sprinkle something with a fine dry substance.

Powder in a sentence

• noun

  She stirred a spoonful of cocoa powder into the warm milk.

• verb

  The baker likes to powder each warm doughnut with sugar.

• noun

  A fine layer of powder coated every shelf in the abandoned workshop.

• verb

  She would lightly powder her face before leaving for work.

Where does powder come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from the Old French poudre, which meant 'dust' or 'fine particles', and that French form descended from the Latin pulvis (stem pulver-), the ordinary word for 'dust' or 'powder'. The same Latin root survives in modern English relatives such as 'pulverise' (to grind into dust) and 'pulverulent', so the link between powder and crushing something to dust is genuine and old. English adopted the word around the year 1300, first for fine ground substances generally, and the sense widened over the centuries to cover medicinal powders, cosmetic powders, and eventually gunpowder. The modern spelling keeps the 'ow' that English commonly used to represent the Old French 'ou' sound, which is why the trap is the unstressed second syllable: it ends in '-der', not '-dur' or '-dor'. Remembering the Latin pulvis behind it helps fix the idea of dust without affecting the everyday spelling.

How the word is built

• powder (a single root from Old French poudre 'dust'; no prefix or suffix)