Flōw1, v. i.
(flō), v. i. [imp. & p. p. FLOWED; p. pr. & vb. n. FLOWING.] [A-S. flôvan, L. Ger. flojen, O. H. Ger. flavjan, float; D. vloeijen, to flow, Icel. flôa, to deluge, Lat. fluere, fluctum, fluxum, to flow.]
Sense 1. To move by the power of gravity, and with a continual change of place among the particles or parts, as a fluid; to change place or circulate, as a liquid; as, rivers flow from springs and lakes; tears flow from the eyes.
Sense 2. To become liquid; to melt.
The mountains flowed down at thy presence. Isa. lxiv. 3.
Sense 3. To glide smoothly or without friction; to proceed; to issue forth; to sound smoothly to the ear; to be uttered easily by the tongue.
Those thousand decencies that daily flow From all her words and actions. Milton.
Virgil is sweet and flowing in his hexameters. Dryden.
Sense 4. To have or be in abundance; to abound; to be full, so as to run or flow over; to be copious.
He in sleights and ingling feats did flow. Spenser.
The moderation to be used in a flowing fortune. Addison.
The exhilaration of a night that needed not the influence of the flowing bowl. Prof. Wilson.
Sense 5. To hang loose and waving; as, a flowing mantle; flowing locks.
The imperial purple flowing in his train. A. Hamilton.
Sense 6. To rise, as the tide; — opposed to ebb; as, the tide flows twice in twenty-four hours.
The fortune of us doth ebb and flow like the sea. Shak.
Sense 7. To discharge blood in excess from the uterus.