1
: moving, swinging, or beating wildly like a flail
—used especially of a person or a person's limbs
They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.—
Rick Riordan
Rick RiordanVivid dreams made him lash out at me in his sleep with kicks and flailing arms.—Jeremy Clarke
Jeremy Clarke… the crowd erupts and the mosh pit pushes flailing bodies towards the stage.—Samantha O'Connor
Samantha O'Connor2
a
: beset by difficulties : struggling
a flailing economy
… phoned a friend to vent about his flailing marriage …—Sarah Grossbart
Sarah Grossbart
b
: clumsy or ineffectual
their flailing attempts/efforts to save the company
flailingly
adverb
… was walking along the ledge of a precipitous dropoff when he slipped on a mossy rock and fell flailingly into the current …
—Jim Mustian
Jim Mustian
Examples of flailing in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Listen to this article Daily for the last week or so, rescue teams have been called to Southern California beaches to help dolphins that are sick and flailing, stranded on the sand.
—Erika I. Ritchie, Orange County Register, 20 Mar. 2025
The devolution of the USA Network, where Suits first aired, tells the story of a flailing medium.
—Time, 11 Aug. 2023
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Erika I. Ritchie, Orange County Register, 20 Mar. 2025
The devolution of the USA Network, where Suits first aired, tells the story of a flailing medium.
—Time, 11 Aug. 2023
Cite this Entry
“Flailing.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flailing. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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