flor

Forms

flor f (plural flores, diminutive florecita)^[1] The earliest record, in the Glosas Emilianenses, has the form flore.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish flor, inherited from Latin flōs (“flower”).^[2][3][4][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese flor, Catalan flor, Occitan flor, French fleur, Italian fiore and Romanian floare, and it was borrowed into Basque lore.^[5][1][6] Mozarabic forms such as folor are also recorded.^[6]

The Latin group /fl-/ usually became /ʎ/ in Castilian, but this word kept it.^[1] Corominas attributes this to the pronunciation of the educated classes, helped by the many figurative uses of the word and its place in litanies and prayers.^[2][1] Prat Sabater notes that this is the DCECH's usual explanation for inherited words that keep /fl-/.^[7] García de Diego holds that the word is not learned, but comes from Riojan.^[6] Portuguese also kept /fl-/ in the standard word, but the regular popular outcome survives in the Trás-os-Montes dialect form chor and in derivatives.^[2][5]

The Latin word was masculine; it became feminine in nearly all the Romance languages, but not in Sardinian and standard Italian.^[2][5] The Latin word goes back to *flōs and *bʰleh₃-ōs (“blossoming”), from the root of Old English blōwan (“to bloom”) and German Blume.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds flore in the Glosas Emilianenses of about 950, and flor in Berceo.^[2] Berceo opens the Milagros de Nuestra Señora in a meadow: Caeci en un prado de flores bien poblado “I came upon a meadow full of flowers”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the word for the flower of a plant, and Alfonso X's Lapidario describes a figure holding a flower in its hand.^[10] The sense “menstruation” is in Nebrija;^[11] Corominas thinks it a metaphor of flor, since the same image is found in many languages, though the old derivation from Latin fluor “flow” cannot be wholly ruled out.^[2][11]

Covarrubias in 1611 listed the figurative senses: the lustre of anything, flor de la canela for what is perfect, the film on top of wine, the grain side of cordovan leather, and the virginity of a maiden, whence desflorar.^[12] The Autoridades adds the finest part of flour and the bloom on plums and grapes.^[13] In the Golden Age, entender la flor meant to see through a trick, a phrase of thieves' slang.^[2]

In Argentina flor is used as an adjective, “fertile, lush”, of land and plants, and the gaucho phrase de mi flor means “excellent”.^[2] The shower head is la flor in Argentina and Uruguay, and in Honduras, Puerto Rico and Bolivia una flor is anything excellent.^[14][1]

Timeline

• c. 950 – flore in the Glosas Emilianenses.^[2]
• 1211 – the Fuero de Zorita (FAZ), the first text with the word in the HSMS archive.^[15]
• 1246–1252 – Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora has un prado de flores.^[9]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records the sense “menstruation”.^[2][11]
• 1546 – the first record from the Americas, in Puebla, of a mark shaped like a flor de lis.^[16]
• 1609 – first record of florear.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias lists flor de la canela and the virginity sense.^[12]
• 1732 – the Autoridades records the flor of flour and of fruit.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A flower, blossom: the coloured part of many plants from which the fruit develops.^[4][1]
2. (botany) The reproductive shoot of flowering plants, made up of the carpels, stamens and the perianth.^[4]
3. The best and choicest part of something: la flor de la harina;^[13] la flor de su juventud.^[4][13]
4. Virginity.^[4][12]
5. (chiefly in the plural) A compliment.^[4][1]
6. The bloom on fruits such as plums and grapes.^[4][13]
7. The film that forms on top of wine in the cask.^[4][12]
8. A fried pastry of eggs, milk and flour shaped like a flower, sprinkled with sugar or honey.^[4]
9. The grain side of tanned leather, which takes a polish.^[4][12]
10. In some card games, three cards of the same suit.^[4]
11. (Argentina, Uruguay) A shower head.^[4][14]
12. (Honduras, Puerto Rico, Bolivia) Something excellent or beautiful.^[14][1]
13. (rare) Menstruation.^[4]

Word family

• floración
• floral
• florear
• florero
• florista
• desflorar
• enflorar

Related words

• florecer
• florete
• florido
• florífero
• florón
• aflorar
• florín
• Latin flōs

Usage notes

A flor de means “on the surface of”, as in a flor de piel and a flor de agua.^[17][2] Flor de lis is the fleur-de-lis.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 917
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flor
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. flor
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. flos
7. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 183
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. flor
10. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. flor
11. ^ a b c Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. flor
12. ^ a b c d e Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 855
13. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 766
14. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. flor
15. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
16. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. flor
17. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. flor