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PlainSpell

flour

UK /ˈflaʊ.ə/noun, verb

flour is spelled F-L-O-U-R: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 10 times per million words in written English, the 7,121st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “flour vs flower” about 210 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, flour means “Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of flour is flours.

How many letters and syllables are in flour?

Letters5: F-L-O-U-R
Syllables1
In writing10 times per million words; the 7,121st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is flour?

Flour appears 10 times per million words in written English, the 7,121st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce flour?

  • UK /ˈflaʊ.ə/
  • UK [ˈflaʊ̯.ə]
  • /ˈflæʊ.ə/

Flour has one syllable.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flour.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with flour

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

flour vs flower210 G

Also written: flower.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with flour?

6 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as flour from its last stressed vowel (/aʊə/, British pronunciation):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: fluor.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of flour

  • flours plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • flouring participle, present
  • floured participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does flour mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 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. 2

    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. 3

    Powder of other material.

    mustard flour

  4. 4

    obsoleteObsolete form of flower.

verb

  1. 1

    To apply flour to something; to cover with flour.

    Flour the surface before rolling out the dough.

  2. 2

    To reduce to flour.

  3. 3

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

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Flour in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchfarine (ground cereal grains or other foodstuff), fariner, enfariner (to apply flour to something)
GermanMehl (ground cereal grains or other foodstuff), bemehlen (to apply flour to something)
Portuguesefarinha (ground cereal grains or other foodstuff), enfarinhar (to apply flour to something)
Spanishharina, farina (disused), fariña, granillo, chuno, soma (ground cereal grains or other foodstuff)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does flour come from?

Spelled (until about 1830) and meaning flower in the sense of flour being the "finest portion of ground grain" (compare French fleur de farine, fine fleur). Doublet of fleur, flor, and flower. Partially displaced native meal. The U.S. standard of identity comes from 21CFR137.105.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after flour