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flour

noun · verb

Simple meaning

Powder get by grinding or milling cereal grains.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

flower

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈflaʊɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Powder 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.

  2. US standards of identity

    The 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.

  3. Powder of other material.

verb

  1. intransitive

    To break up into fine globules of mercury in the amalgamation process.

  2. transitive

    To apply flour to something; to cover with flour.

    “Flour fish or meat before frying it.”

  3. Convert grain into flour

  4. transitive

    To reduce to flour.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Powder 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.

Used this way, flour is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use flour

  • “Flour fish or meat before frying it.”verb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Powder / food

wheat flourrice flourflour millingrye flour

Other combinations

purpose flourflour mixturecup flouradd flour

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • flourishverbDerived verb

    Grow vigorously.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • flour binnounCompound term

    A bin for holding flour.

  • flour millnounCompound term

    A mill for grinding grain into flour.

  • flour weevilnounCompound term

    An insect that infests flour and stored grains.

  • flour cornnounCompound term

    Corn having kernels almost entirely of soft starch.

  • flour beetlenounCompound term

    An insect that infests flour and stored grains.

  • graham flournounCompound term

    Flour made by grinding the entire wheat berry including the bran.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.