Word.ws English Dictionary

flail about

flail about verb: to wave one's arms (or upper body) about violently, rather like a flail.

Verb

flail about (third-person singular simple present flails about, present participle flailing about, simple past and past participle flailed about)

  1. (intransitive) To wave one's arms (or upper body) about violently, rather like a flail.
    • Barry continued to shout obscenities and to flail about in a strait jacket, finally succumbing to the effects of intravenously administered tranquilizers.1969, Theodore Millon, Modern Psychopathology: A Biosocial Approach to Maladaptive Learning and Functioning
  2. (figuratively, intransitive) To make efforts that are strenuous but disorganized and ineffectual.

Forms of flail about

third-person singular presentflails about
present participleflailing about
past participleflailed about
pastflailed about

Questions about flail about

What does flail about mean?
Flail about means to wave one's arms (or upper body) about violently, rather like a flail.
What part of speech is flail about?
Flail about is a verb.
What is the past tense of flail about?
The past tense of flail about is flailed about.

Words near flail about in the dictionary

  1. Flahives
  2. flaid
  3. Flaig
  4. Flaigs
  5. flail
  6. flail about
  7. flail chest
  8. flail tank
  9. flail tanks
  10. flailed
  11. flailed about

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flail about (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “flail about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flail_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.