• IPA: /bluːm/

bloom

1. A blossom; the flower of a plant; an expanded bud.

   • the rich blooms of the tropics

2. Flowers, collectively.
3. (uncountable) The opening of flowers in general; the state of blossoming or of having the flowers open.

   The cherry trees are in bloom.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 3”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     sight of vernal bloom

4. (figuratively) A state or time of beauty, freshness, and vigor; an opening to higher perfection, analogous to that of buds into blossoms.

   • Every successive mother has transmitted a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty.

   the bloom of youth
5. Rosy colour; the flush or glow on a person's cheek.
6. The delicate, powdery coating upon certain growing or newly-gathered fruits or leaves, as on grapes, plums, etc.
   • 2010, Donna Pliner Rodnitzky, Low-Carb Smoothies

     The bloom on blueberries is the dusty powder that protects them from the Sun; it does not rinse off.

7. Anything giving an appearance of attractive freshness.

   • a new, fresh, brilliant world, with all the bloom upon it

8. The clouded appearance which varnish sometimes takes upon the surface of a picture.
9. A yellowish deposit or powdery coating which appears on well-tanned leather.
10. (mineralogy) A bright-hued variety of some minerals.

    the rose-red cobalt bloom

11. (culinary) A white area of cocoa butter that forms on the surface of chocolate when warmed and cooled.
12. (television) An undesirable halo effect that may occur when a very bright region is displayed next to a very dark region of the screen.

• (flower of a plant) blossom, flower
• (opening of flowers) blossom, flower
• (anything giving an appearance of attractive freshness) flush, glow

• French: floraison, en fleurs, efflorescence
• Russian: цвет

• French: fleur
• Russian: цвет

• French: pruine, velours, duvet
• German: Reifbelag
• Italian: pruina
• Spanish: pruina

• French: fleur

• French: voile

bloom (blooms, present participle blooming; past and past participle bloomed)

1. (transitive) To cause to blossom; to make flourish.

   • Charitable affection bloomed them.

2. (transitive) To bestow a bloom upon; to make blooming or radiant.
   • 1819 September 19​, John Keats, “To Autumn”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: Printed [by Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1820, OCLC 927360557 ↗, stanza 3, page 138 ↗:

     Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— / While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; [...]

3. (intransitive) Of a plant, to produce blooms; to open its blooms.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 1”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     A flower which once / In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, / Began to bloom.

4. (intransitive, figuratively) Of a person, business, etc, to flourish; to be in a state of healthful, growing youth and vigour; to show beauty and freshness.

   • A better country blooms to view, / Beneath a brighter sky.

• (produce blooms) blossom, flower
• (flourish) blossom, flourish, thrive

• Russian: зацвести́
• Spanish: florecer

• German: blühen
• Spanish: florecer

bloom (plural blooms)

1. The spongy mass of metal formed in a furnace by the smelting process.
   • 1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, p. 26:

     These metallic bodies gradually increasing in volume finally conglomerate into a larger mass, the bloom, which is extracted from the furnace with tongs.

• bloomery
• blooming

• IPA: /bluːm/

1. Surname