Word.ws English Dictionary

flunking

flunking is the present participle and gerund of flunk.

Meaning of flunk

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.)

Phrases with flunking

Questions about flunking

What is flunking the present participle and gerund of?
Flunking is the present participle and gerund of flunk.

Words near flunking in the dictionary

  1. flunkeyism
  2. flunkeyistic
  3. flunkeys
  4. flunkie
  5. flunkies
  6. flunking
  7. flunking out
  8. flunkout
  9. flunkouts
  10. flunks
  11. flunks out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flunking (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “flunking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flunking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.