Floral means covered in flowers — the pattern, not the plant. A floral dress, floral curtains in the spare room, floral wallpaper in a hallway nobody has touched since 1974.
Floral also does smells and tastes: a floral perfume, a wine with floral notes, a tea that tastes floral rather than grassy. Florists use it for the flowers themselves — floral tributes at a funeral, a floral display in a hotel lobby. It is the adjective from flower, and it does not mean 'made of flowers': a floral shirt has no flowers on it, only pictures of them. Do not use it for a garden full of blooms either; that is flowery — and flowery, said of writing, means over-decorated.
1adjectivefloralDecorated with a pattern of flowers.~10%
“She wore a floral apron over her jumper.”
2adjectivetasteSmelling or tasting of flowers.~2%
“The gin is floral, with a lot of elderflower in it.”
3adjectiveflowersTo do with real flowers, as in a floral arrangement or a floral tribute.~88%
“The floral arrangements arrived an hour before the guests.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Floral came through French floral from Latin flōrālis, built on flōs, 'flower', and behind that a Proto-Indo-European root, bʰleh₃-. English already had flower, which took the same Latin word by an older road through Old French. Floral is the tidy Latin adjective arriving later to do the describing.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰleh₃-
Latin
flōrālis
French
floral
English, today
floral
Built from
From French floral, from Latin flōrālis, from flōs (“flower”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA