flop

/flɑp/

/flɒp/

Other forms: flopped; flopping; flops

To flop is to drop or hang heavily and loosely. If you're exhausted at the end of the day, you might flop into a chair as soon as you walk into your house.

Your long hair might flop into your eyes, and if you catch a fish, you'll have to watch it flop around in your boat before it stops breathing. A tired child might begin to sob and flop onto the floor in frustration. You can also call a disaster a flop: "We worked so hard on that play, but it turned out to be a total flop." The earliest meaning of flop was "to flap."

Definitions of flop

1. verb

   fall loosely
   “He flopped into a chair”

   type of:

   break, cave in, collapse, fall in, founder, give, give way

   break down, literally or metaphorically
2. verb

   fall suddenly and abruptly
   type of:

   come down, descend, fall, go down

   move downward and lower, but not necessarily all the way
3. noun

   the act of throwing yourself down
   “he landed on the bed with a great flop”

   synonyms: collapse

   type of:

   descent

   the act of changing your location in a downward direction
4. adverb

   with a flopping sound
   “he tumbled flop into the mud”
5. adverb

   exactly
   “he fell flop on his face”

   synonyms: right
6. verb

   fail utterly; collapse
   synonyms: fall flat, fall through, founder

   type of:

   fail, go wrong, miscarry

   be unsuccessful
7. noun

   a complete failure
   “the play was a dismal flop”

   synonyms: bust, clunker, fizzle

   types:

   bomb, dud, turkey

   an event that fails badly or is totally ineffectual

   type of:

   failure

   an event that does not accomplish its intended purpose
8. noun

   someone who is unsuccessful
   synonyms: clunker, dud, washout

   type of:

   failure, loser, nonstarter, unsuccessful person

   a person with a record of failing; someone who loses consistently
9. noun

   an arithmetic operation performed on floating-point numbers
   “this computer can perform a million flops per second”

   synonyms: floating-point operation

   type of:

   computer operation, machine operation

   an elementary operation that a computer is designed and built to perform