bloom [ME] The early word for ‘flower’ in English was blossom. Old Norse blóm ‘flower, blossom’, was the source of bloom in English, which shares a base with the verb blow [OE] ‘to burst into flower’, now most often met in overblown [E17th]. A bloomer [L19th] is from the use of blooming [LME, L19th as a swear word] for ‘bloody’ in blooming error and is thought to be Australian prison slang. In the 1930s another bloomer entered the vocabulary as a name for a type of loaf but it is not clear where from.