floor

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

Noun

  1. The interior bottom or surface of a house or building; the supporting surface of a room.
    • The room has a wooden floor.
    • 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. - 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes,...
  2. The bottom surface of a natural structure, entity, or space (e.g. cave, forest, ocean, desert, etc.); the ground (surface of the Earth).
    • The leaves covering the forest floor provide many hiding-places for small animals.
    • Many sunken ships rest on the ocean floor.
    • The floor of a cave served the refugees as a home.
  3. The ground.
    • After stepping off the bus, my wallet fell on the floor.
  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.
    • 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...
  7. In a parliament, the part of the house assigned to the members, as opposed to the viewing gallery.
  8. 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. That part of the bottom of a vessel on each side of the keelson which is most nearly horizontal.
  10. A horizontal, flat ore body; the rock underlying a stratified or nearly horizontal deposit.
  11. The bottom of a pit, pothole or mine.
  12. The largest integer less than or equal to a given number.
    • The floor of 4.5 is 4.

Origin

Inherited from Middle English floor, floour, flor, flore, flour, flur, vlor, from Old English flōr (“floor, pavement; deck; gangplank”), from Proto-West Germanic *flōr, from Proto-Germanic *flōraz (“ground; floor”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂ros (“floor”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat”). Cognates Cognate with Scots flair, fluir (“floor”), Saterland Frisian Floor (“floor”), Dutch vloer (“floor”), German Flur (“corridor, hall, hallway, stairwell”), Limburgish Vlǫǫr (“floor”), Low German Floor (“hallway or entrance to a house”), Luxembourgish Flouer (“countryside, farmland”); also Breton and Cornish leur (“floor, ground, surface”), Irish lár (“floor, ground”), Scottish Gaelic làr (“earth, floor, ground”), Manx laare (“bottom, deck, floor; level, storey”), Welsh llawr (“floor, ground”), Latin plānus (“even, flat, level”), Greek απαλάμη (apalámi), παλάμη (palámi, “hand,...

Forms

floors

Synonyms

possession floor flooring ground flight

Antonyms

ceiling roof

Hyponyms

earth floor hearth nightingale floor parquet ground floor first floor

Related

flooring mezzanine floorage floorspace straight-joint

Derived

4-on-the-floor back to the floor barnfloor cornfloor cross the floor dance floor deck floor drill floor earth-floor earth floor first floor floorage floorball floorboard floor box floor broker floorcare floorcest floor cloth floorcloth floorcovering floor cramp floordrobe floor effect

Verb

  1. To cover or furnish with a floor.
    • floor a house with pine boards
    • 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,[…]. - 1963, Margery...
  2. To strike down or lay level with the floor; to knock down.
    • Sam floored him perpetually, and beat his face to a jelly, without getting a scratch. - 1821, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume 8, page 67:
  3. To hang (a picture on exhibition) near the base of a wall, where it cannot easily be seen.

    Antonyms: sky

  4. To push (a pedal) down to the floor, especially to accelerate.
    • our driver floored the pedal
    • I don't remember much about the flight from Chicago to Denver. We landed a little after eleven, and I ran through the airport, ran to my car. Floored it most of the way home. - 2008, Wally Lamb, The Hour I First...
  5. To silence by a conclusive answer or retort.
    • floor an opponent
    • Floored or crushed by him. - c. 1827-1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notes on Hacket:
  6. To amaze or greatly surprise.
    • We were floored by his confession.
    • Some of the attendees were “absolutely floored,” said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could “make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the...
  7. To finish or make an end of.
    • floor a college examination
    • I've floored my little-go work - 1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown at Oxford: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC:
  8. To set a lower bound.
    • floored division

Forms

floors flooring floored