flour

plural flours · alternative obsolete flower

1. uncountableusuallyPowder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and pastry.

   1 more example

   Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […] A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.

   1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

2. uncountableusuallyUS standards of identityThe food made by grinding and bolting cleaned wheat (not durum or red durum) until it meets specified levels of fineness, dryness, and freedom from bran and germ, also containing any of certain enzymes, ascorbic acid, and certain bleaching agents.

   Synonyms: smeddum, plain flour, wheat flour, wheatmeal, white flour

3. uncountableusuallyPowder of other material.

   almond flour

   2 more examples

   cassava flour

   mustard flour

4. obsoleteuncountableusuallyObsolete form of flower.

   that nobody is wished to see my dead body. & that no murnurs walk behind me at my funeral. & that no flours be planted on my grave.

   1886 May, Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC

present singular third person flours · participle present flouring · participle past floured · past floured · alternative obsolete flower

1. transitiveTo apply flour to something; to cover with flour.

   Flour the surface before rolling out the dough.

2. transitiveTo reduce to flour.
3. intransitiveTo break up into fine globules of mercury in the amalgamation process.