flop

Verb

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.
   • 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...1846, Charles Dickens, “Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, page 19
2. (transitive) To cause to drop heavily.
   • The tired mule flopped its ears forward and trudged on.
3. (informal, intransitive) 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. (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. (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.
   • […] not just the old material goal of "three hots and a place to flop," […]1969, Howard E. Freeman, Norman R. Kurtz, America's Troubles: A Casebook on Social Conflict, Prentice-Hall, page 414
   • They have opened up crypts and basements as immense pads where vagrant and impoverished hippies can flop for the night.1973, Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Pantheon Books, page 135
8. (transitive) To flip; to reverse (an image).
   • 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.1968, Advertising Techniques, volumes 4-5, page 28
   • […] in order to flop the image left-to-right, or all printing will appear reversed.1986, Functional Photography, volumes 21-23, page 58
9. (slang, transitive) To deny someone parole.
   • 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.1986 April 12, anonymous author, “One Day I'll Write a Book on This”, in Gay Community News, page 4

Noun (1)

flop (plural flops)

1. A heavy, passive fall; a plopping down.
2. A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry.
   • 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 top1979, Lou Reed, “I Want to Boogie With You”, in The Bells

   Synonyms:

   dud, fiasco, turkey, box office bomb

3. The first three cards turned face-up by the dealer in a community card poker game.
   • The flop didn't help you but probably did help the other hands.1996, John Patrick, John Patrick's Casino Poker: Professional Gambler's Guide to Winning
   • Here are six tips to help you play successfully on the flop (the first three communal cards).2003, Lou Krieger, Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games
4. Dung, as in cow-flop.
   • "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, ...1960, Winston Graham, Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1783-1787, Bodley Head, page 302
   • ... cowpat or cow-flop, Cow dung, often used dry as heating fuel.2000, Dean King, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales, Henry Holt & Co., page 162
5. (slang) A flophouse.
   • He was kind of worn but the tooth said he'd never lost a fight or slept in a flop.2013, Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, Dangerous Games

Interjection

1. Indicating the sound of something flopping.
   • "One step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him!"1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, page xx. 154

Adverb

flop (not comparable)

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

Noun (2)

flop (plural flops)

1. (by confusion) One floating-point operation per second, a unit of measure of processor speed.
   • The gigaflop supercomputers of today are almost useless. What is needed is a teraflop machine. That’s a machine that can run at a trillion flops, a trillion floating-point operations per second, or roughly a thousand times as fast as Cray Y-MP8.1992 March 2, Richard Preston, “The Mountains of Pi”, in The New Yorker

Noun (3) capitalized: FLOP

FLOP (plural FLOPs)

1. Synonym of flop.