Word.ws English Dictionary

flunk

/flʌŋk/

flunk verb: of a student, to fail a class; to not pass.

Verb

flunk (third-person singular simple present flunks, present participle flunking, simple past and past participle flunked)

  1. (US, ambitransitive) Of a student, to fail a class; to not pass.
    • He flunked math, again.
  2. (US, transitive) Of a teacher, to deny a student a passing grade.
    • Unsatisfied with Fred's progress, the teacher flunked him.
  3. (US, broadly) To fail any challenge
  4. (US, dated, informal) To shirk (a task or duty).
  5. (US) To back out through fear. (Commonly in the phrase 'flunk it', the 'it' referring to a specific task avoided; sometimes without specific reference, describing a person's attitude to life in general.)

flunk meaning in Vietnamese

flunk in Vietnamese

to deny a passing grade
đánh hỏng
to fail
hỏng, thi trượt

Examples of flunk in a sentence

  • It's 9:41, 58 degrees, and I'm flunking out. Time to bear down.
  • He flunked out of high school as a youth, but finished school later in life.
  • My brother flunked biology because he cheated on his mid-term.

All 11 example sentences with flunk

Forms of flunk

third-person singular presentflunks
present participleflunking
past participleflunked
pastflunked

Past tense of flunk: flunked

Origin of flunk

Alteration of funk, or perhaps a blend of flinch + funk.

Words formed from flunk

Words that rhyme with flunk

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flunk

What does flunk mean?
Flunk means of a student, to fail a class; to not pass.
What is flunk in Vietnamese?
Flunk in Vietnamese is đánh hỏng, hỏng, thi trượt. See Flunk meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is flunk?
Flunk is a verb.
How do you pronounce flunk?
Flunk is pronounced /flʌŋk/.
What is the past tense of flunk?
The past tense of flunk is flunked.

Words near flunk in the dictionary

  1. flunging
  2. flunisolide
  3. flunitrazepam
  4. flunixin
  5. flunixine
  6. flunk
  7. flunk out
  8. flunked
  9. flunked out
  10. flunkee
  11. flunkees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flunk (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-flunk.wav.

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