flop

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See also: FLOP, and Flop

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Recorded since 1602, probably a variant of flap with a duller, heavier sound

Verb

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flop (third-person singular simple present flops, present participle flopping, simple past and past participle flopped)

  1. (intransitive) To fall heavily due to lack of energy.
    He flopped down in front of the television, exhausted from work.
    • 1846, Charles Dickens, “Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, page 19:
      There was [in the clock in Lyons Cathedral] a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging his little door violently, after him.
  2. (transitive) To cause to drop heavily.
    The tired mule flopped its ears forward and trudged on.
  3. (intransitive, informal) To fail completely; not to be successful at all (of a movie, play, book, song etc.).
    The latest album flopped and so the studio canceled her contract.
  4. (sports, intransitive) To pretend to be fouled in sports, such as basketball, hockey (the same as to dive in soccer)
    It starts with Chris Paul, because Blake didn't really used to flop like that, you know, last year.
    While Stern chastised Vogel for on Thursday calling the Heat "the biggest flopping team in the NBA," he did intimate that he sees merit in the sentiment.
  5. (intransitive) To strike about with something broad and flat, as a fish with its tail, or a bird with its wings; to rise and fall; to flap.
    The brim of a hat flops.
  6. (poker, transitive) To have (a hand) using the community cards dealt on the flop.
    Both players flopped sets! Cards dealt on the flop: Q95. Player A's hole cards: 55 (making three of a kind: 555). Player B's hole cards: QQ (making three of a kind: QQQ).
  7. (intransitive, slang) To stay, sleep or live in a place.
    • 1969, Howard E. Freeman, Norman R. Kurtz, America's Troubles: A Casebook on Social Conflict, Prentice-Hall, page 414:
      […] not just the old material goal of "three hots and a place to flop," […]
    • 1973, Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Pantheon Books, page 135:
      They have opened up crypts and basements as immense pads where vagrant and impoverished hippies can flop for the night.
  8. (transitive) To flip; to reverse (an image).
    • 1968, Advertising Techniques, volumes 4-5, page 28:
      The possibilities of this type of shot are almost limitless. By quartering the screen and duplicating and flopping the picture, a kaleidoscopic effect is achieved.
    • 1986, Functional Photography, volumes 21-23, page 58:
      […] in order to flop the image left-to-right, or all printing will appear reversed.
  9. (transitive, prison slang) To deny someone parole.
    • 1986 April 12, anonymous author, “One Day I'll Write a Book on This”, in Gay Community News, page 4:
      I've been incarcerated going on 9½ years. I have never been back on the streets or given a chance to prove myself to society. Every time I would meet the parole board they would flop me telling me I would be a threat to society.
Derived terms
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terms derived from flop (verb)
Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Noun

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flop (plural flops)

  1. A heavy, passive fall; a plopping down.
  2. A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry.
    Synonyms: dud, fiasco, turkey, box office bomb
    • 1979, Lou Reed (lyrics and music), “I Want to Boogie With You”, in The Bells:
      Well I know your little baby sister / She thinks that I'm a flop / But I guess that you know that it's true / I spent more time at the bottom than the top
  3. (poker) The first three cards turned face-up by the dealer in a community card poker game.
    • 1996, John Patrick, John Patrick's Casino Poker: Professional Gambler's Guide to Winning:
      The flop didn't help you but probably did help the other hands.
    • 2003, Lou Krieger, Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games:
      Here are six tips to help you play successfully on the flop (the first three communal cards).
    • 2005, Henry Stephenson, Real Poker Night: Taking Your Home Game to a New Level:
      The strength of your hand now has nothing to do with how strong it may have been before the flop.
  4. A ponded package of dung, as in a cow-flop.
    • 1960, Winston Graham, Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1783-1787, Bodley Head, page 302:
      "Maybe as you think," he said, "because as I've the misfortune of an accidental slip on a cow-flop therefore I has the inability of an unborn babe, ...
    • 2000, Dean King, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales, Henry Holt & Co., page 162:
      ... cowpat or cow-flop, Cow dung, often used dry as heating fuel.
    • 2003, John W. Billheimer, Drybone Hollow, St. Martin's Press, page 215:
      "Cow flop in a neat package is still cow flop. What did Cable stand to gain from the flood?"
    • 2018 Brent Butt as Brent Herbert Leroy, "Sasquatch Your Language", Corner Gas Animated
      Wherever legitimate tracks are found there's always some fresh scat, y'know, poo, flop, dumplings.
  5. (slang) A flophouse.
    • 2013, Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, Dangerous Games:
      He was kind of worn but the tooth said he'd never lost a fight or slept in a flop.
Derived terms
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Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Interjection

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flop

  1. Indicating the sound of something flopping.

Adverb

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flop (not comparable)

  1. Right, squarely, flat-out.
    She fell flop on the floor.
  2. With a flopping sound.
See also
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Etymology 2

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A variant capitalization of FLOP, a syllabic acronym of floating-point operations.

Noun

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flop (plural flops)

  1. (computing) One floating-point operation per second, a unit of measure of processor speed.
  2. (computing) Abbreviation of floating-point operation.
    • 1993 August 17, New York Times, C8:
      The Correlator can perform 750 billion ‘flops’, or simple calculations, per second.
Alternative forms
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  • (unit of processing speed): FLOPS
  • (floating-point operation): FLOP
Derived terms
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terms derived from flop (computing)

References

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Dutch

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English flop. See also flap.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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flop m (plural floppen or flops, diminutive flopje n)

  1. a failure, something that went wrong
  2. short for floppydisk

Synonyms

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Descendants

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  • → Indonesian: flop (“failure”)

Verb

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flop

  1. inflection of floppen:
    1. first-person singular present indicative
    2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
    3. imperative

Anagrams

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French

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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flop m (plural flops)

  1. (colloquial) flop (failure)

Indonesian

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Etymology

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From Dutch flop, from English flop, perhaps a variant of flap. The sport sense is semantic loan from English.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /flop/
  • Rhymes: -op
  • Hyphenation: flop

Noun

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flop

  1. a failure, something that went wrong
  2. flop (to strike about with something broad and flat, to rise and fall, to flap)
  3. high jump

References

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