flounder

plural flounders

1. A European species of flatfish having dull brown colouring with reddish-brown blotches; fluke, European flounder (Platichthys flesus).

   Water Souchy. Eels, whitings, soles, flounders, and mackerel are generally used. Stew it in clear fish stock, until done, eight minutes will be enough; add cayenne, catsup, an anchovy, and any other flavouring ingredient; let it boil up, skim, and serve hot altogether in a tureen.

   1851, Anne Cobbett, The English Housekeeper, Chapter 13

2. CanadaUSAny of various flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae or Bothidae.

   Blackfishing from the beach. I've done my research. Hundreds of shipwrecks line the Jersey coast, and many of them are close enough to reach with a long cast on a dead-low tide. These wrecks hold tautog, porgies, sea bass, flounder.

   2014, Nick Honachefsky, The Jersey Surf Diaries

3. A bootmaker's tool for crimping boot fronts.

present singular third person flounders · participle present floundering · participle past floundered · past floundered

1. intransitiveTo act clumsily or confused; to struggle or be flustered.

   He gave a good speech, but floundered when audience members asked questions he could not answer well.

   5 more examples

   They have floundered on from blunder to blunder.

   a. 1857, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1859–1860, →OCLC

   These epics nearly always had runaway trains, nincompoops floundering with the controls and a collapsed bridge just ahead!

   1958 February 28, David Gunston, “Railways on the Screen”, in Railway Magazine, page 88

   He is assessing directions, but he is not lost, not floundering.

   1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 136

   an assassin who misses his aim and flounders into penitence much as that discomfortable drama misses its point and stumbles into vacuity

   1886, Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Age of Shakespeare, John Webster

   […] I'm floundering at sloppy deliberation in the choice of every new word, and thus damned up in my soul is left to rot. The limit of my foremind to tap and drain onto paper any flow from my residue of self-saturated thoughts is usually half a page at any one sitting.

   2007, Neal Cassady, “Letter to Allen Ginsberg, May 15, 1951”, in Anne Waldman, editor, The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation

2. intransitiveTo flop around as a fish out of water.
3. intransitiveTo make clumsy attempts to move or regain one's balance.

   Robert yanked Connie's leg vigorously, causing her to flounder and eventually fall.

4. To be in serious difficulty.

   Meanwhile bus and tram competition was causing the Central London Railway to flounder after its early success, and as for the City & South London ... that had always floundered.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 159