[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To sprinkle with flour. Also transf. To powder (a wig).
1651–7. T. Barker, Art of Angling (1820), 14. Be sure that it [suet] boyle before you put in your fish, being cut on the side and floured, you must keep them with stirring all the time you are frying them.
1725. Bradley, Fam. Dict., Sheeps-tongues … after they have been flower’d and fry’d till they come to a fine Colour, they may be soaked by degrees with Truffles and Mushrooms.
1732. E. Forrest, Hogarth’s Tour, 5. Then arose, had our shoes cleaned, were shaved, and had our wigs flowered by a Fisherman in his boots and shock hair, without coat or waistcoat.
1750. E. Smith, Compleat Housewife (ed. 14), 178. Flour some sheets of tin, and drop your bisket what bigness your please, and put them into the oven as fast as you can.
1887. Besant, The World Went Very Well Then, xxvi. 200. It was, however, but one of the ’prentices flouring the Vicar’s wig for Sunday.
2. U. S. To grind (grain) into flour.
1828. Webster, s.v. Great quantities of it [wheat] are floured in the interior countries.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., 156. The mill can flour two hundred barrels a day.
3. intr. Mining. Of mercury: To break up into dull particles coated with some sulphide and incapable of coalescing with other metals. Cf. FLOURING vbl. sb.
1882. A. G. Lock, Gold, 564. Regarding the mercury employed for amalgamation. That this substance generally sickens or ‘flours’ when ground up with pyritous rocks, is so well known.
