flounderling
nounEtymology From flounder + -ling.
1
A small or young flounder
- On such an one I came All inadvertently, Splashing the shallows Where Atlantic ebb Was making bare The flats, As when one Wading Sets unguarded step Upon a lurking Flounderling.1918, Richard Darwin Ware, Rediscoveries, page 102:
- At first flounderlings are thin-bodied but typically fishlike in other respects. Then suddenly striking anatomical changes take place, and the creature's behavior becomes fixed for an essentially two-dimensional way of life.1979, John L. Culliney, The forests of the sea: life and death on the Continental Shelf, page 90: