Definition of "farinaceous"

Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High-street of the market town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be.

1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

The very fact that the secretion of saliva in the young child does not become established until the third month after birth, seems to indicate that before that age farinaceous articles of diet are unsuited to the infant, as saliva is one of the most potent agents in the digestion of starchy foods.

1870, Eustace Smith, On the Wasting Diseases of infants and children, Henry C. Lea, page 28

As Mr. Giffen has pointed out, a rise in the price of bread makes so large a drain on the resources of the poorer labouring families and raises so much the marginal utility of money to them, that they are forced to curtail their consumption of meat and the more expensive farinaceous foods: and, bread being still the cheapest food which they can get and will take, they consume more, and not less of it […]

1895, Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, page 208

In the Great Pavilion, the nurserymen and women have been employing their dark arts, too; coaxing agapanthus into bloom two months early, cosseting iris with wads of strategically placed cotton wool or touching up the farinaceous, fan-shaped fronds of a Bismarck palm with face powder.

2007 May 22, Victoria Summerley, “It does us good to get our hands dirty”, in The Independent Online