Word.ws English Dictionary

turn flukes

turn flukes verb: of a whale: to go under, dive.

Verb

turn flukes (third-person singular simple present turns flukes, present participle turning flukes, simple past and past participle turned flukes)

  1. Of a whale: to go under, dive.
  2. (slang) To turn in, go to bed.
    • But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 3”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Forms of turn flukes

third-person singular presentturns flukes
present participleturning flukes
past participleturned flukes
pastturned flukes

Questions about turn flukes

What does turn flukes mean?
Turn flukes means of a whale: to go under, dive.
What part of speech is turn flukes?
Turn flukes is a verb.
What is the past tense of turn flukes?
The past tense of turn flukes is turned flukes.

Words near turn flukes in the dictionary

  1. turn coat
  2. turn coats
  3. turn construction unit
  4. turn construction units
  5. turn down
  6. turn flukes
  7. turn forth
  8. turn heads
  9. turn in
  10. turn in on oneself
  11. turn in one's grave

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turn flukes (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: En-au-turn flukes.ogg.

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