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.Synonyms
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 WebPCMAG, 10 Apr. 2024
Many of the films Disney produced last year flopped at the box office, driving less traffic to its lucrative theme parks, whose role in turn is to rejuvenate consumer interest in its underlying content like its Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise and start the process afresh.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2024
Company Town Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor flopped on the stock market.
—Wendy Lee, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024
Back inside the studio, Richardson flops onto the sofa in her dressing room after an intense block of filming, a mass of white curls still piled up on her head.
—K.j. Yossman, Variety, 29 Mar. 2024
Other Key Races Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, abruptly ended her bid for U.S. Senate, a campaign flop that reflected intense national frustration with politics as usual.
—Katie Rogers, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2024
One year later, the Wildcats flopped as a No. 2 seed, blowing a 13-point second-half lead to Steve Nash and Santa Clara.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 19 Mar. 2024
These candid stories remind viewers that flopping big-time is inevitable in life - but bouncing back stronger is possible.
—Tyler Shepherd, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2024
An alarming string of box office bombs last year led by the Lucasfilm Indiana Jones flop prompted Peltz to return.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 18 Mar. 2024
Bryan Mena, CNN, 7 Apr. 2024
There’s no hack for growing trees Grant Canary’s first idea for how to fix reforestation was a flop.
—Lydia Depillis, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
The Sony film is one of the biggest flops in comic book movie history.
—Anna Tingley, Variety, 15 Mar. 2024
Villeneuve is not the first director to tackle Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic: the avant-garde Chilean French director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and failed to make a version in the mid-seventies; David Lynch made a much loved, operatically campy box-office flop, in 1984.
—The New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2024
By this point, most Americans are numb to his flip flops; no one was truly surprised when Trump voiced support for TikTok not long after trying to ban it as President.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 2 Apr. 2024
With George, Merrily was a rare flop in Sondheim’s oeuvre.
—Keaton Bell, Vogue, 15 Mar. 2024
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 re-release.
—Katie Rife, EW.com, 12 Mar. 2024
The 1978 Motown film adaptation, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, was a critical and box-office flop.
—Naveen Kumar, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2024
Verb
But the whole proposition flops if clock speeds can’t be raised by all that much.
—PCMAG, 10 Apr. 2024
Many of the films Disney produced last year flopped at the box office, driving less traffic to its lucrative theme parks, whose role in turn is to rejuvenate consumer interest in its underlying content like its Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise and start the process afresh.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2024
Company Town Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor flopped on the stock market.
—Wendy Lee, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024
Back inside the studio, Richardson flops onto the sofa in her dressing room after an intense block of filming, a mass of white curls still piled up on her head.
—K.j. Yossman, Variety, 29 Mar. 2024
Other Key Races Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, abruptly ended her bid for U.S. Senate, a campaign flop that reflected intense national frustration with politics as usual.
—Katie Rogers, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2024
One year later, the Wildcats flopped as a No. 2 seed, blowing a 13-point second-half lead to Steve Nash and Santa Clara.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 19 Mar. 2024
These candid stories remind viewers that flopping big-time is inevitable in life - but bouncing back stronger is possible.
—Tyler Shepherd, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2024
An alarming string of box office bombs last year led by the Lucasfilm Indiana Jones flop prompted Peltz to return.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 18 Mar. 2024
Noun
It’s been a flop When Amazon debuted cashier-less technology, it was hailed as the future of retail.
—Bryan Mena, CNN, 7 Apr. 2024
There’s no hack for growing trees Grant Canary’s first idea for how to fix reforestation was a flop.
—Lydia Depillis, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
The Sony film is one of the biggest flops in comic book movie history.
—Anna Tingley, Variety, 15 Mar. 2024
Villeneuve is not the first director to tackle Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic: the avant-garde Chilean French director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and failed to make a version in the mid-seventies; David Lynch made a much loved, operatically campy box-office flop, in 1984.
—The New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2024
By this point, most Americans are numb to his flip flops; no one was truly surprised when Trump voiced support for TikTok not long after trying to ban it as President.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 2 Apr. 2024
With George, Merrily was a rare flop in Sondheim’s oeuvre.
—Keaton Bell, Vogue, 15 Mar. 2024
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 re-release.
—Katie Rife, EW.com, 12 Mar. 2024
The 1978 Motown film adaptation, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, was a critical and box-office flop.
—Naveen Kumar, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flop.' 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 flop
Cite this Entry
“Flop.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flop. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
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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