Word.ws English Dictionary

flails about

flails about is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 flails about

What is flails about the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Flails about is the third-person singular simple present indicative of flail about.

Words near flails about in the dictionary

  1. flailing about
  2. flailingly
  3. flailings
  4. flaillike
  5. flails
  6. flails about
  7. flailsome
  8. flaily
  9. Flaim
  10. Flaims
  11. flain

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flails 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: “flails about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flails_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.