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Flounder is a relatively common verb that current evidence dates to the late 16th century, when it was likely born by means of an alteration of an older verb, founder. The two have been confused ever since. Today, founder is most often used as a synonym of fail, or, in the case of a waterborne vessel, as a word meaning "to fill with water and sink." Formerly, it was also frequently applied when a horse stumbled badly and was unable to keep walking. It's likely this sense of founder led to the original and now-obsolete meaning of flounder: "to stumble." In modern use, flounder typically means "to struggle" or "to act clumsily"; the word lacks the finality of founder, which usually denotes complete collapse or failure, as that of a sunken ship.
Synonyms
Examples of flounder in a Sentence
Jp Shaffer, Miami Herald, 4 Apr. 2024
Features Vanesa flounders in the wake of her mother’s death, while Dita, who never aspired to be a parent, struggles to fill the void left behind.
—Elaina Patton, NBC News, 3 Apr. 2024
Closer to the shore and in the bay, the daily catch could include redfish, flounder, black drum, and trout.
—Southern Living Editors, Southern Living, 4 Mar. 2024
Cliff Harbour, a veteran educator who for 14 years was a community college faculty member and administrator in North Carolina, has seen lots of young people pursuing associate’s degrees flounder and drop out because of insufficient support.
—Rick Wartzman, Fortune, 14 Dec. 2023
Sea bass, flounder, ocean perch, and red snapper are all great choices, around a pound in weight.
—Lucas Sin, Bon Appétit, 20 Mar. 2024
Griselda indeed succeeds as compensation for previous and perhaps even upcoming treatments of Blanco — a movie with Jennifer Lopez has been long in development — but flounders in over-compensation.
—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Jan. 2024
Its flavor is more pronounced, too: The flounder has a distinct brininess, which stands up better to the richness of the brioche bun and the acidity of the pickles and tartar sauce.
—Tim Carman, Washington Post, 28 Feb. 2024
First introduced back in 2021, the flounder fish sandwich comes in classic and spicy options.
—Sabrina Weiss, Peoplemag, 15 Feb. 2024
Danny Emerman, The Mercury News, 17 Apr. 2024
The real estate sector in particular is floundering.
—Aniruddha Ghosal, Quartz, 12 Apr. 2024
Europe’s first-of-its-kind digital competition law draws contrasts to the United States, where proposals to regulate the tech industry have repeatedly floundered.
—Brian Fung, CNN, 7 Mar. 2024
The feeling of a world out of control—inflation, Afghanistan, Ukraine—contributed to a sense that Biden was floundering.
—Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 4 Mar. 2024
Zimmer could be the beneficiary if McCarthy continues to flounder at the most inopportune moments.
—Steve Silverman, Forbes, 17 Feb. 2024
Brandon Huntley-Hatfield unleashed his frustration on a basketball, spiking it off the court to himself during a stoppage of play and shouting one of the four-letter words that were flying around the Louisville bench Saturday while the Cardinals floundered against Virginia.
—The Courier-Journal, 27 Jan. 2024
Threatening to take her mother to court and floundering to pay for her education, Thompson challenged her mom for not thinking of her daughter’s future needs.
—Chloe Berger, Fortune, 5 Apr. 2024
Three weeks ago, the floundering Wolfpack was on the outside of the NCAAs — not even a bubble team, in fact.
—Jon Wilner, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flounder.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near flounder
Cite this Entry
“Flounder.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flounder. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
flounder
1 of 2 noun
flounder
2 of 2 verb
Noun
Middle English flounder "a flatfish"; of Scandinavian origin
Verb
probably an altered form of founder "to go lame, collapse"
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