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
Zack Sharf, Variety, 27 Oct. 2025
The flowers are the best, even if the leaves are lame and flop over.
—Joshua Siskin, Oc Register, 25 Oct. 2025
Olivia Evans, Louisville Courier Journal, 3 Nov. 2025
With its sadistic violence, taboo sexuality, and grim depiction of postwar London, Peeping Tom was a flop that essentially ended the illustrious career of director Michael Powell, falling into obscurity until Martin Scorsese rescued it and rehabilitated its reputation with a 1979 rerelease.
—Katie Rife, Entertainment Weekly, 30 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for flop
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Verb
Lawrence has been open in past interviews about needing to take a two year break from Hollywood after making 16 movies in six years, a string of which flopped at the box office and only inflamed the public’s negative reception of her.
—Zack Sharf, Variety, 27 Oct. 2025
The flowers are the best, even if the leaves are lame and flop over.
—Joshua Siskin, Oc Register, 25 Oct. 2025
Noun
The thick, textured metal bottle opener depicts a fish mid flop.
—Olivia Evans, Louisville Courier Journal, 3 Nov. 2025
With its sadistic violence, taboo sexuality, and grim depiction of postwar London, Peeping Tom was a flop that essentially ended the illustrious career of director Michael Powell, falling into obscurity until Martin Scorsese rescued it and rehabilitated its reputation with a 1979 rerelease.
—Katie Rife, Entertainment Weekly, 30 Oct. 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 6 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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