flop

Etymology 1

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

verb

1. (intransitive) To fall heavily due to lack of energy.
   He flopped down in front of the television, exhausted from work.
2. (transitive) To cause to drop heavily.
   The tired mule flopped its ears forward and trudged on.
3. (intransitive, informal) To fail completely; not to be successful at all (of a movie, play, book, song etc.).
   The latest album flopped and so the studio canceled her contract.
4. (sports, intransitive) To pretend to be fouled in sports, such as basketball, hockey (the same as to dive in soccer)
   It starts with Chris Paul, because Blake didn't really used to flop like that, you know, last year.
   While Stern chastised Vogel for on Thursday calling the Heat "the biggest flopping team in the NBA," he did intimate that he sees merit in the sentiment.
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.
   The brim of a hat flops.
6. (poker, transitive) To have (a hand) using the community cards dealt on the flop.
   Both players flopped sets! Cards dealt on the flop: Q95. Player A's hole cards: 55 (making three of a kind: 555). Player B's hole cards: QQ (making three of a kind: QQQ).
7. (intransitive, slang) To stay, sleep or live in a place.
   […] 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).
   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

noun

1. A heavy, passive fall; a plopping down.
2. A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry.
   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.
   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.
   "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
   2018 Brent Butt as Brent Herbert Leroy, "Sasquatch Your Language", Corner Gas Animated Wherever legitimate tracks are found there's always some fresh scat, y'know, poo, flop, dumplings.
5. (slang) A flophouse.
   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

intj

1. Indicating the sound of something flopping.
   One step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! 1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, page xx. 154

adv

1. Right, squarely, flat-out.
   She fell flop on the floor.
2. With a flopping sound.

Etymology 2

A variant capitalization of FLOP, a syllabic acronym of floating-point operations.

noun

1. (computing) One floating-point operation per second, a unit of measure of processor speed.
   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. March 2 1992, Richard Preston, “The Mountains of Pi”, in The New Yorker
2. (computing) Abbreviation of floating-point operation.
   The Correlator can perform 750 billion ‘flops’, or simple calculations, per second. August 17 1993, New York Times, C8