Bloomed

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /bluːmd/

Definitions

1. Produced flowers, opening and showing petals ; developed or grew successfully, reaching a peak of health or beauty
2. Began to flower or blossom as part of a plant’s life cycle ; became more developed or thrived in growth or quality
3. Opened its flowers fully during the blooming phase ; matured or progressed nicely, showing signs of thriving or improvement

Etymology: Bloomed is simply the past tense and past participle of "bloom," so its story is really the story of the noun. The root is a Proto-Germanic word meaning "flower," which passed into Old Norse as "blóm" and then into Middle English as "blome." Its sibling is German "Blume," Dutch "bloem," and Swedish "blomma," so the notion of a flower reaches far into northern Europe. The surprise is that English once used "bloom" for something entirely unfloral. Old English "blōma" meant a lump of iron, the spongy mass a smith hammered out of the furnace before it was worked into a bar. That metal sense and the flower sense are doublets, two words from one ancestor that split apart over the centuries and still sit side by side in dictionaries. The verb's figurative sense, a person or project thriving, grows naturally from the flower's act of opening fully and showing its best. The forms "blooms" and "blooming" follow the same pattern, so "bloomed" needs no separate explanation.

Synonyms: flowered, blossomed, flourished, opened

Antonyms: withered, faded