Definition of "flop"

flop¹

/flɒp/

verb
third-person singular simple present flops, present participle flopping, simple past and past participle flopped
1. (intransitive) To fall heavily due to lack of energy.
  Quotations
  There was [in the clock in Lyons Cathedral] a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging his little door violently, after him.
  1846, Charles Dickens, “Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], page 19
2. (transitive) To cause to drop heavily.
3. (intransitive, informal) To fail completely; not to be successful at all (of a movie, play, book, song etc.).
4. (sports, intransitive) To pretend to be fouled in sports, such as basketball, hockey (the same as to dive in soccer)
5. (intransitive) To strike about with something broad and flat, as a fish with its tail, or a bird with its wings; to rise and fall; to flap.
6. (poker, transitive) To have (a hand) using the community cards dealt on the flop.
7. (intransitive, slang) To stay, sleep or live in a place.
  Quotations
  […] not just the old material goal of "three hots and a place to flop," […]
  1969, Howard E. Freeman, Norman R. Kurtz, America's Troubles: A Casebook on Social Conflict, Prentice-Hall, page 414
  They have opened up crypts and basements as immense pads where vagrant and impoverished hippies can flop for the night.
  1973, Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Pantheon Books, page 135
8. (transitive) To flip; to reverse (an image).
  Quotations
  The possibilities of this type of shot are almost limitless. By quartering the screen and duplicating and flopping the picture, a kaleidoscopic effect is achieved.
  1968, Advertising Techniques, volumes 4-5, page 28
  […] in order to flop the image left-to-right, or all printing will appear reversed.
  1986, Functional Photography, volumes 21-23, page 58
9. (transitive, prison slang) To deny someone parole.
  Quotations
  I've been incarcerated going on 9½ years. I have never been back on the streets or given a chance to prove myself to society. Every time I would meet the parole board they would flop me telling me I would be a threat to society.
  1986 April 12, anonymous author, “One Day I'll Write a Book on This”, in Gay Community News, page 4
noun
plural flops
1. A heavy, passive fall; a plopping down.
2. A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry.
  Quotations
  Well I know your little baby sister / She thinks that I'm a flop / But I guess that you know that it's true / I spent more time at the bottom than the top
  1979, Lou Reed (lyrics and music), “I Want to Boogie With You”, in The Bells
3. (poker) The first three cards turned face-up by the dealer in a community card poker game.
  Quotations
  The flop didn't help you but probably did help the other hands.
  1996, John Patrick, John Patrick's Casino Poker: Professional Gambler's Guide to Winning
  Here are six tips to help you play successfully on the flop (the first three communal cards).
  2003, Lou Krieger, Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games
  The strength of your hand now has nothing to do with how strong it may have been before the flop.
  2005, Henry Stephenson, Real Poker Night: Taking Your Home Game to a New Level
4. A ponded package of dung, as in a cow-flop.
  Quotations
  "Maybe as you think," he said, "because as I've the misfortune of an accidental slip on a cow-flop therefore I has the inability of an unborn babe, ...
  1960, Winston Graham, Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1783-1787, Bodley Head, page 302
  ... cowpat or cow-flop, Cow dung, often used dry as heating fuel.
  2000, Dean King, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales, Henry Holt & Co., page 162
  "Cow flop in a neat package is still cow flop. What did Cable stand to gain from the flood?"
  2003, John W. Billheimer, Drybone Hollow, St. Martin's Press, page 215
  Wherever legitimate tracks are found there's always some fresh scat, y'know, poo, flop, dumplings.
  2018 Brent Butt as Brent Herbert Leroy, "Sasquatch Your Language", Corner Gas Animated
5. (slang) A flophouse.
  Quotations
  He was kind of worn but the tooth said he'd never lost a fight or slept in a flop.
  2013, Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, Dangerous Games
interjection
1. Indicating the sound of something flopping.
  Quotations
  "One step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him!"
  1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, page xx. 154
adverb
not comparable
1. Right, squarely, flat-out.
2. With a flopping sound.

flop²

/flɒp/

noun
plural flops
1. (computing) One floating-point operation per second, a unit of measure of processor speed.
  Quotations
  The gigaflop supercomputers of today are almost useless. What is needed is a teraflop machine. That’s a machine that can run at a trillion flops, a trillion floating-point operations per second, or roughly a thousand times as fast as Cray Y-MP8.
  1992 March 2, Richard Preston, “The Mountains of Pi”, in The New Yorker
2. (computing) Abbreviation of floating-point operation.
  Quotations
  The Correlator can perform 750 billion ‘flops’, or simple calculations, per second.
  1993 August 17, New York Times, C8

Definition of "flop"

flop1

verb

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noun

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interjection

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adverb

flop2

noun

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flop¹

flop²