Origin and history of sunflower

c. 1200, flour, also flur, flor, floer, floyer, flowre, "the blossom of a plant; a flowering plant," from Old French flor "flower, blossom; heyday, prime; fine flour; elite; innocence, virginity" (12c., Modern French fleur), from Latin florem (nominative flos) "flower" (source of Italian fiore, Spanish flor), from PIE root *bhel- (3) "to thrive, bloom."

From late 14c. in English as "blossoming time," also, figuratively, "prime of life, height of one's glory or prosperity, state of anything that may be likened to the flowering state of a plant." As "the best, the most excellent; the best of its class or kind; embodiment of an ideal," early 13c. (of persons, mid-13c. of things); for example flour of milk "cream" (early 14c.); especially "wheat meal after bran and other coarse elements have been removed, the best part of wheat" (mid-13c.). Modern spelling and full differentiation from flour (n.) is from late 14c.

In the "blossom of a plant" sense it ousted its Old English cognate blostm (see blossom (n.)). Also used from Middle English as a symbol of transitoriness (early 14c.); "a beautiful woman" (c. 1300); "virginity" (early 14c.). Flower-box is from 1818. Flower-arrangement is from 1873. Flower child "gentle hippie" is from 1967.

"the sun as a heavenly body or planet; daylight; the rays of the sun, sunlight," also the sun as a god or object of worship; Middle English sonne, from Old English sunne "the sun," from Proto-Germanic *sunno (source also of Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old High German sunna, Middle Dutch sonne, Dutch zon, German Sonne, Gothic sunno "the sun"), from PIE *s(u)wen-, an alternative form of root *sawel- "the sun."

Old English sunne was fem. (as generally in Germanic), and the fem. pronoun was used in English until 16c.; since then masc. has prevailed, "without necessarily implying personification" [OED].

Under the sun for "anywhere in the world" is by c. 1200 (late Old English had under sunnan). The empire on which the sun never sets (1630) originally was the Spanish, later the British. To have one's place in the sun (1680s) is first in English in a translation of Pascal's "Pensées"; the German imperial foreign policy sense (1897) is from a speech by von Bülow. When the sun is over the foreyard is "noon" at sea, the traditional time of the first serving of the day's first drink.