Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To fall or lie down heavily and noisily.
  • intransitive verb To move about loosely or limply.
  • intransitive verb Informal To fail utterly.
  • intransitive verb To rest idly; lounge.
  • intransitive verb To go to bed.
  • intransitive verb To drop or lay (something) down heavily and noisily.
  • intransitive verb In certain poker games, to have attained (a hand) as a result of the first three community cards that are dealt face up at the same time.
  • noun The act of flopping.
  • noun The sound made when flopping.
  • noun Informal An utter failure.
  • noun In certain poker games, the first three community cards that are dealt face up at the same time.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of flopping or flapping.
  • noun A fall like that of a soft outspread body upon the ground.
  • noun Something that flops or is capable of flopping or striking, as a fluid, semi-liquid, or gelatinous substance, against the side of a vessel containing it.
  • noun A sudden collapse or breakdown, as of resistance.
  • To clap or strike, as the wings; flap.
  • To cause to fall or hang down.
  • To flap.
  • To plump down suddenly; turn or come down with a flop: as, to flop on one's knees.
  • To collapse; yield or break down suddenly.
  • To go over suddenly to another side or party; make a sudden change of association or allegiance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun colloq. Act of flopping.
  • transitive verb To clap or strike, as a bird its wings, a fish its tail, etc.; to flap.
  • transitive verb colloq. To turn suddenly, as something broad and flat.
  • intransitive verb To strike about with something broad and flat, as a fish with its tail, or a bird with its wings; to rise and fall.
  • intransitive verb colloq. To fall, sink, or throw one's self, heavily, clumsily, and unexpectedly on the ground.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun computing A unit of measure of processor speed, being one floating-point operation per second.
  • verb To fall heavily, because lacking energy.
  • verb To fail completely, not to be successful at all (about a movie, play, book, song etc.).
  • verb sports To pretend to be fouled in sports, such as basketball, hockey (the same as to dive in soccer)
  • noun An incident of a certain type of fall; a plopping down.
  • noun A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry.
  • noun poker The first three cards turned face-up by the dealer in a community card poker game.
  • noun A place to stay, sleep or live. See flophouse
  • noun A ponded package of dung, as in a cow-flop.
  • adverb Right, squarely, flat-out.
  • adverb With a flopping sound.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a complete failure
  • adverb with a flopping sound
  • noun an arithmetic operation performed on floating-point numbers
  • noun the act of throwing yourself down
  • verb fall suddenly and abruptly
  • verb fall loosely
  • noun someone who is unsuccessful
  • verb fail utterly; collapse
  • adverb exactly

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration of flap.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Syllabic abbreviation of floating point + operation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Recorded since 1602, probably a variant of flap with a duller, heavier sound

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Examples

Comments

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  • Whether stooping to remove a pile of horse flop or sauntering off to his swank hotel, his hat had to be just so.

    —Toni Morrison, Jazz

    Not in OED in this precise sense, but it does have: 3. dial. A mass of thin mud. Also transf.

    December 30, 2008