flopped; flopping
1
: to swing or move loosely : flap
2
: to throw or move oneself in a heavy, clumsy, or relaxed manner
flopped into the chair
3
: to change or turn suddenly
4
: to go to bed
a place to flop at night
5
: to fail completely
The play flopped.
: to move or drop heavily or noisily : cause to flop
flopped the bundles down
flopper
noun
plural flops
: a unit of measure for calculating the speed of a computer equal to one floating-point operation per second
Supplied by IBM, with a billion flops (floating point operations per second) and a capacity to expand to 60 billion flops with the addition of other processors and memory, it will be among the 10 most sophisticated computers in the world.—
Eleanor Wilson
—usually used in combinationEleanor Wilsongigaflop
A GPU [=graphics processing unit] can deliver hundreds of billions of operations per second—some GPUs more than a teraflop, or a trillion operations per second—while requiring only slightly more electrical power and cooling than a CPU.—Andrea Di Blas et al.
Andrea Di Blas et al.Examples of flop in a Sentence
Verb
He flopped down onto the bed.
She flopped into the chair with a sigh.
All of their attempts have flopped miserably.
The curtains were flopping around in the breeze.
Noun (1)
The movie was a total flop.
It fell to the ground with a flop.
Recent Examples on the Web
James Hibberd, HollywoodReporter, 14 Nov. 2025
That assumption can result in models that may perform well in testing but flop when they’re actually used in the real world.
—Kathleen Walch, Fortune, 11 Nov. 2025
Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 14 Nov. 2025
Justice for Hallmark movies in general, and this one—in which Markle plays a successful businesswoman who tries to use a popular dating field guide to revive her flop of a personal life—in particular.
—Emma Specter, Vogue, 12 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for flop
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Verb
It’s been 10 years since Fantastic Four flopped, but its box-office failure still smarts for star Miles Teller.
—James Hibberd, HollywoodReporter, 14 Nov. 2025
That assumption can result in models that may perform well in testing but flop when they’re actually used in the real world.
—Kathleen Walch, Fortune, 11 Nov. 2025
Noun
Along with some bad trailers, that might explain the flop of this sweet, funny flick about a guardian angel (a perfect Keanu Reeves) who ends up losing his wings after a rich man (Seth Rogen) ends up body-swapping with his former assistant (Aziz Ansari).
—Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 14 Nov. 2025
Justice for Hallmark movies in general, and this one—in which Markle plays a successful businesswoman who tries to use a popular dating field guide to revive her flop of a personal life—in particular.
—Emma Specter, Vogue, 12 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for flop
Cite this Entry
“Flop.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flop. Accessed 17 Nov. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
flop
1 of 2 verb
flopped; flopping
1
: to swing or bounce loosely : flap about
a hat brim flopping
2
a
: to throw oneself down in a heavy, clumsy, or relaxed manner
flopped into the chair
b
: to throw or drop suddenly and heavily or noisily
flopped the bundles down with a thud
3
: to fail completely
the play flopped
flop
2 of 2 noun1
: an act or sound of flopping
2
: a complete failure : dud
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