Word.ws English Dictionary

flailing about

flailing about is the present participle and gerund of flail about.

Meaning of flail about

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.

Questions about flailing about

What is flailing about the present participle and gerund of?
Flailing about is the present participle and gerund of flail about.

Words near flailing about in the dictionary

  1. flail tank
  2. flail tanks
  3. flailed
  4. flailed about
  5. flailing
  6. flailing about
  7. flailingly
  8. flailings
  9. flaillike
  10. flails
  11. flails about

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flailing about (page history and authors); 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: “flailing about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flailing_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.