Other forms: flowers, flowering, flowered
A flower is the colourful part of a plant that smells sweet and draws the bees. Petals, a stem, and a few days of glory.
Its actual job is reproduction, and the colour and scent are advertising aimed at insects. English uses the word for the whole plant too, since you grow flowers in a bed and buy flowers in a shop. As a verb, to flower means to bloom and, figuratively, to reach a full and confident state. The phrase in flower means currently blooming, and a flowering is the season of it.
1nounflowerThe coloured, seed-producing part of a plant.~56%
“The tree was covered in white flowers.”
2verbproduceTo produce flowers, or to develop fully.~44%
“The roses flower twice in a good year.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰleh₃- — to thrive, bloom
Proto-Italic
*flōs
Latin
flōrem
Anglo-Norman
flur
Middle English
flour
English, today
flower
From Middle English flour, from Anglo-Norman flur, from Latin flōrem, accusative of flōs, from Proto-Italic flōs, from Proto-Indo-European bʰleh₃- (“to thrive, bloom”). a doublet of fleur and flor and flour and bloom and blossom. Partly displaced native Old English blostma (which is cognate), whence Modern English blossom.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA