flour

noun

1. (uncountable, usually)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.

   “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.”

2. (uncountable, usually)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. (uncountable, usually)Powder of other material.

   “mustard flour”

4. (alt-of, obsolete, uncountable, usually)Obsolete 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.”

verb

1. (transitive)To apply flour to something; to cover with flour.
2. (transitive)To reduce to flour.
3. (intransitive)To break up into fine globules of mercury in the amalgamation process.