flounder
verbEtymology Possibly from the noun. Probably a blend of flounce + founder or a blend of founder + blunder or from Dutch flodderen (“wade”). See other terms beginning with fl, such as flutter, flitter, float, flap, flub, flip.
1
To act clumsily or confused; to struggle or be flustered.
- He gave a good speech, but floundered when audience members asked questions he could not answer well.
- They have floundered on from blunder to blunder.a. 1857, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1859–1860, →OCLC:
4 more examples
- These epics nearly always had runaway trains, nincompoops floundering with the controls and a collapsed bridge just ahead!1958 February 23, David Gunston, “Railways on the Screen”, in Railway Magazine, page 88:
- He is assessing directions, but he is not lost, not floundering.1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 136:
- an assassin who misses his aim and flounders into penitence much as that discomfortable drama misses its point and stumbles into vacuity1886, Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Age of Shakespeare, John Webster:
- […] I'm floundering at sloppy deliberation in the choice of every new word, and thus damned up in my soul is left to rot. The limit of my foremind to tap and drain onto paper any flow from my residue of self-saturated thoughts is usually half a page at any one sitting.2007, Neal Cassady, “Letter to Allen Ginsberg, May 15, 1951”, in Anne Waldman, editor, The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation:
2
To flop around as a fish out of water.
3
To make clumsy attempts to move or regain one's balance.
- Robert yanked Connie's leg vigorously, causing her to flounder and eventually fall.
4
To be in serious difficulty.
- Meanwhile bus and tram competition was causing the Central London Railway to flounder after its early success, and as for the City & South London ... that had always floundered.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 159:
- Synonyms
- faulter
- Derived terms
- flounderer, flounderingly, flounderish
- Related terms
- flail