sb. Also 7 -our. [a. L. fluor flowing, f. fluĕre to flow. Cf. OF. flueur.]
† 1. A flow or flowing; a flux, stream. Also = EFFLUVIUM 2 b. Obs.
1644. Digby, Nat. Bodies, I. xxi. 189. These fluours do proceed out of the very substance and nature of the loadestone.
1664. Power, Experimental Philosophy, III. 156. Whereas Electrical fluors do presently recoyl by short streight lines to their Bodies again, Magnetical Atoms do not so; but do wheel about, and, by a Vortical motion, do make their return unto the Loadstone again, as Des-Cartes hath excellently declared.
1671. R. Bohun, Disc. Wind, 54. They blow not in one constant fluor, or streame, but in gusts, that have their starts and intervals, intermitting like our pulse.
2. spec. in Pathology. † a. pl. = FLOWERS (obs.). ǁ b. Fluor albus = LEUCORRHŒA.
1621. Ainsworth, Annot. Pentat., Gen. xviii. 11. The custome (or manner) of women, for the ordinary & naturall course of the body, or fluors.
1662. Trapp, Comm., 2 Sam. xi. 4. For she was purified from her uncleanness,] i.e., Her monethly fluors; and so was the apter to conceive with child.
1754–64. Smellie, Midwif., I. 110. The Fluor albus is no other than this Mucus discharged in too great quantity from the uterus, as well as from the vagina.
† 3. A fluid state, fluidity, esp. with regard to substances ordinarily solid; concr. something that is fluid, a fluid mass; in pl. the humours (of the body). Obs.
1665. G. Harvey, Advice agst. Plague, 2. Pestilential Miasms, insinuating into the humoral and consisten parts of the Body; first speedily putreyfing, then corrupting the fluors, afterwards the solid parts.
1684. T. Burnet, The Theory of the Earth, I. 210. A peculiar ferment that opens and dissolves the parts of the Meat, and melts them into a fluor or pulp.
1686. J. Goad, Astro-meteorologica, I. ix. 31. Rarity is nothing but a Privation of Density, Softness of Hardness, Smoothness of Asperity, Fluor of Solidity.
1704–21. Newton, Opticks, III. (ed. 3), 371. Are of such a smallness as renders them most susceptible of those Agitations which keep Liquors in a Fluor.
4. Min. † a. The generic name for a class of minerals first defined by G. Agricola, and by him described (Bermannus sive de Re Metallica, 1546) as resembling gems, but of less hardness, readily fusible, and useful as fluxes in smelting (obs.). b. After Scheele’s discovery of hydrofluoric acid or ‘Swedish air’ in 1771 the name was applied spec. to such of these minerals as contain fluorine, chiefly (now exclusively) to calcium fluoride or FLUOR-SPAR.
Agricola’s term fluores was a translation of the Ger. miners’ name flusse—an apt designation, he remarks, for minerals formed ‘εκ συρροης, i. e. confluxu in terra.’
1661. Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. E viij. Some [may be liquefied] by fire, as metallick fluores, translucid gemms, flints, & mettals.
1676. J. Beaumont, in Phil. Trans., XI. 728. This Stone is in Substance a whitish Opaque Fluor.
1692. Ray, Dissol. World, 114. As for such that do not resemble any part of a Fish, they are either Rock Plants … or do shoot into that form, after the manner of Salts and Fluors.
1776. Priestley, Air, II. 187. A substance which the chymists distinguish by the name of fluor … which with us is called the Derbyshire spar.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. Th., 17. The strata are consolidated, for example, by quartz, by fluor, by feldspar, and by all the metals, in their endless combinations with sulphureous bodies.
1823. H. J. Brooke, Introd. Crystallogr., 41. The octahedron of fluor, which we have just obtained.
1866. Ruskin, Eth. Dust, 159. The fluor of Chamouni is rose-coloured, and in octahedrons, while the fluor of Weardale is green, and in cubes.
5. attrib. † fluor acid, hydrofluoric acid.
1791. Tennant, in Phil. Trans., LXXXI. 184. I made phosphorus pass through a compound of marine acid and calcareous earth, and also of fluor acid and calcareous earth, but without producing in either of them any alteration.
1794. Sullivan, View Nat., I. 230. Fluor acid air, or sparry air.
1828. Webster, Fluor-acid, the acid of fluor.
