▪ I. flunk, n. U.S.
(flʌŋk)
[f. next vb.]
1. A backing out, a total failure, esp. in a college examination.
| 1846 Yale Banger 10 Nov. (B. H. Hall College Wds.) This O..Tutor H― said meant a perfect flunk. 1853 Songs of Yale (Bartlett) In moody meditation sunk, Reflecting on my future flunk. 1904 N.Y. Even. Post 6 Jan. 5 A sprinter and football player has received a flunk in one study and a condition in another. 1948 Time 16 Feb. 94/3 This time there were twice as many flunks. |
2. (See quot.)
| 1893 Farmer Slang, Flunk, an idler, a loafer. |
▪ II. flunk, v. U.S.
(flʌŋk)
[Cf. flink, funk.]
1. a. intr. To give up, back out, fail utterly. Also to flunk out. Also quasi-trans. To shirk (a recitation) (Standard Dict.).
| 1823 Crayon (Yale Coll.) (Bartlett), We must have at least as many subscribers as there are students in college or flunk out. a 1830 Col. Hay in Humorous Poems (ed. W. M. Rossetti) 474 He never flunked and he never lied. 1838 J. C. Neal Charcoal Sk., Rocky Smalt 46 Why, little 'un, you must be cracked, if you flunk out before we begin. 1850 H. C. Watson Camp-fires Revol. 414 They were, of course, exposed to the fire of the red-coats..but they didn't flunk a bit. 1894 P. L. Ford Hon. Peter Stirling (1898) 355 What will people say of me on November fourth, if my regiment flunks on September thirtieth? 1901 Munsey's Mag. XXV. 408/2 It looks pretty middling tough, and it won't do to try it and flunk. 1910 J. Hart Vigilante Girl xxi. 294, I don't mean that he's flunking, for he's no coward. 1971 Sunday Times (Johannesburg) 28 Mar. 7/1 Sinatra himself said: ‘I've flunked out with women more often than not. Like most men, I don't understand them.’ |
b. College slang. To fail utterly in an examination. Also trans., to fail (an examination, etc.); to flunk out: to be dismissed from a school or university for failing examinations.
| 1848 Yale Lit. Mag. XIII. 322 Flunking so gloomily. 18.. Amherst Indicator I. 253 (Bartlett), A man who has flunked..is not in a state to appreciate joking. 1899 A. H. Quinn Pennsylvania Stories 166 He never attracted attention by his scholarship, but yet he drifted along somehow without flunking. 1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise (1921) 35 He'll fail his exams, tutor all summer..and flunk out in the middle of the freshman year. 1923 R. D. Paine Comr. Rolling Ocean vi. 99 He tutored for Princeton and flunked in freshman year. 1924 P. Marks Plastic Age xviii. 202, I don't..chase around with filthy bags or flunk my courses. 1936 L. C. Douglas White Banners xvi. 342 He was working hard to take a calculus examination that he had flunked..two years ago. 1951 Reader's Digest May 12/1 He flunked out of various high schools, not because he was too stupid. 1968 Listener 27 June 841/1 The scene is..Columbia University, where a number of young Second World War vets and/or non-combatants are making gestures at working for degrees or just hanging around after flunking out. 1970 Times 12 Aug. 5/7, I was utterly, deeply, completely depressed and flunked my A levels. |
2. trans. To cause to ‘flunk’; to pluck.
| 1843 Yale Lit. Mag. IX. 61 That day poor Fullman was flunked, and was never again reinstated in the good graces of our officer. 1893 W. K. Post Harvard Stories 231 That was all very well for him, who..never got ‘flunked’. 1899 A. H. Quinn Pennsylvania Stories 40 He..finally flunked him in his finals. 1910 N.Y. Even. Post 29 Nov. 8 Examining boards may ‘flunk’ an officer in his first examination. 1966 Word Study Feb. 2/2 For if English teachers had always based their grades in English on the moral probity of their students' private lives, they would have had to flunk such naughty boys as Christopher Marlowe, James Boswell, Dylan Thomas, and Baltimore's own Edgar Allan Poe. |
Hence ˈflunking ppl. a.
| 1848 Yale Gallinipper Nov. (B. H. Hall College Wds.), See what a spot a flunking Soph'more made! |