floor

From Middle English, from Old English flōr (“floor, pavement, ground, bottom”), from Proto-Germanic *flōrō, *flōrô, *flōraz (“flat surface, floor, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂ros (“floor”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat”). Cognate with West Frisian flier (“floor”), Dutch vloer (“floor”), German Flur (“field, floor, entrance hall”), Swedish flor (“floor of a cow stall”), Irish urlár (“floor”), Scottish Gaelic làr (“floor, ground, earth”), Welsh llawr (“floor, ground”), Latin plānus (“level, flat”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: flô, IPA^(key): /flɔː/
• (General American) enPR: flôr, IPA^(key): /flɔɹ/
• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) enPR: flōr, IPA^(key): /flo(ː)ɹ/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /floə/

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)
• Homophone: flaw (in non-rhotic accents with the horse–hoarse merger)

floor (plural floors)

1. The interior bottom or surface of a house or building; the supporting surface of a room.

   The room has a wooden floor.

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 55 Fifth Avenue, [1933], OCLC 2666860, page 0016:

     A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.

2. Ground (surface of the Earth, as opposed to the sky or water or underground).
3. The lower inside surface of a hollow space.

   Many sunken ships rest on the ocean floor.

   The floor of a cave served the refugees as a home.

   The pit floor showed where a ring of post holes had been.

4. A structure formed of beams, girders, etc, with proper covering, which divides a building horizontally into storeys/stories.
5. The supporting surface or platform of a structure such as a bridge.

   Wooden planks of the old bridge's floor were nearly rotten.

6. A storey/story of a building.

   For years we lived on the third floor.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 19, in The China Governess‎:

     When Timothy and Julia hurried up the staircase to the bedroom floor, where a considerable commotion was taking place, Tim took Barry Leach with him. He had him gripped firmly by the arm, since he felt it was not safe to let him loose, and he had no immediate idea what to do with him.

7. In a parliament, the part of the house assigned to the members, as opposed to the viewing gallery.
8. Hence, the right to speak at a given time during a debate or other public event.

   Will the senator from Arizona yield the floor?

   The mayor often gives a lobbyist the floor.

9. (nautical) That part of the bottom of a vessel on each side of the keelson which is most nearly horizontal.
10. (mining) The rock underlying a stratified or nearly horizontal deposit.
11. (mining) A horizontal, flat ore body.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Raymond to this entry?)

12. (mathematics) The largest integer less than or equal to a given number.

    The floor of 4.5 is 4.

13. (gymnastics) An event performed on a floor-like carpeted surface.
14. (gymnastics) A floor-like carpeted surface for performing gymnastic movements.
15. (finance) A lower limit on the interest rate payable on an otherwise variable-rate loan, used by lenders to defend against falls in interest rates. Opposite of a cap.
16. A dance floor.
    • 1983, "Maniac", Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky:

      She's a maniac, maniac on the floor / And she's dancing like she never danced before

    • 1987, "Walk the Dinosaur", Was (Not Was):

      Open the door, get on the floor / Everybody walk the dinosaur

17. The area in which business is conducted at a convention or exhibition

• (bottom part of a room): see Thesaurus:floor
• (right to speak): possession (UK)

• ceiling

• flooring
• mezzanine

floor (third-person singular simple present floors, present participle flooring, simple past and past participle floored)

1. To cover or furnish with a floor.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess‎:

     The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […].

   floor a house with pine boards

2. To strike down or lay level with the floor; to knock down.
3. (driving, slang) To accelerate rapidly.
   • As soon as our driver saw an insurgent in a car holding a detonation device, he floored the pedal and was 2,000 feet away when that car bomb exploded. We escaped certain death in the nick of time!
4. To silence by a conclusive answer or retort.
   • Floored or crushed by him. — Coleridge

   floor an opponent

5. To amaze or greatly surprise.

   We were floored by his confession.

6. (colloquial) To finish or make an end of.
   • I've floored my little-go work — ed Hughes

   floor a college examination

7. (mathematics) To set a lower bound.

• Floor (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Floor in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)