Other forms: floundering, floundered, flounders
To flounder is to struggle clumsily without making progress. Flounder about, floundering in the mud, the company floundered.
The image is of somebody stuck in deep mud or water, thrashing and going nowhere. Figuratively it describes anybody out of their depth — floundering in an interview, a floundering business. Note the near-neighbour founder, which means to sink or fail completely: a floundering ship is struggling and a foundering one is going down. A flounder is also a flatfish, which is a separate word.
1verbflounderTo struggle clumsily without making progress.
“Without a clear plan, the new manager floundered and the team kept losing.”
2nounflatfishA flatfish.
“The fisherman caught a flounder in the shallow water of the estuary.”
flounder is a struggling, or a fish.
The fish comes from Old Norse flydra. The verb is probably a separate imitative formation, possibly influenced by founder and blunder.
Proto-Germanic
*flunþrijǭ
Old Norse
flyðra
fro-nor
flondre
Anglo-Norman
floundre
Middle English
flowndre
English, today
flounder
From Middle English flowndre, from Anglo-Norman floundre, from fro-nor flondre, from Old Norse flyðra, from Proto-Germanic flunþrijǭ. Cognate with Danish flynder, German Flunder, Swedish flundra.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Verbs