Also 5 floundre, flownder, -dre, flondyre, 7 flunder. [The phonology seems to show that the immediate source is AF. floundre (14th c., Black Bk. Admir., II. 102) = OF. flondre (still current in Normandy); app. of Scandinavian origin: cf. ON. flyðra (:—flunprjôn-), MSw., Sw., Norw. flundra, Da. flynder; mod.Ger. has flunder, but this is given by Gesner in 16th c. as only an English name (Kluge).
The MHG. vlnoder of the same meaning is related by ablaut to FLATHE, and cannot be directly connected with flounder; but the latter may possibly be from a nasalized form of the same root.]
1. A small flat-fish, Pleuronectes Flesus. In the U.S. applied to various other species of flat-fish. Prov. As flat as a flounder.
a. 1450. Fysshynge wyth an angle (1883), 30. The flounder is an holsom fisshe & a free and a subtyll byter in his manere.
1513. Bk. Keruynge, in Babees Bk., 282. Base, flounders, sole.
1622. Peacham, Compl. Gentl., V. xxi. (1634), 254. The Eele and Flounder are two greedy Fish and bite at the redde worme.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), VI. 174. Many fish are furnished with an air-bladder that continually crawl at the bottom; such as the eel and the flounder.
a. 1845. Hood, To Tom Woodgate, vi.
| Or are you where the flounders keep, | |
| Some dozen briny fathoms deep. |
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., II. vii. 77. You came in upon four of us down as flat as flounders.
2. Something resembling this fish. a. dial. = FLUKE 2. b. See quot. 1874.
a. 1853. Cooper, Sussex Gloss., Flounders, animals found in the livers of rotten sheep, called in Somerset, flooks. S.
1883. in Hampsh. Gloss.
b. 1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 889/2. Flounder. A slicking-tool whose edge is used to stretch leather for a boot front in a blocking or crimping board.
1875. Ure’s Dict. Arts, III. 100. After this, the fronts are regularly placed on a block, being forced into position by an instrument called the flounder, and tacked to their place.
3. attrib. and Comb., as flounder-fishery, flounder-like adj. Also flounder-lantern, a dial. name of the common flounder; flounder-man, a hawker of flounders; flounder-mouth, a mouth like a flounder’s, a large mouth; whence flounder-mouthed adj.; flounder’s-head (whale), a bottled-nosed whale.
1884. Pall Mall G., 20 Sept., 2/1. The *flounder fishery is looking up again.
1630. Massinger, Renegado, III. i. Not to firke your belly vp *flounder like.
1700. Congreve, Way of World, V. 77. Into the Throats and Lungs of Hawkers, with Voices more Licentious than the loud *Flounder-man’s.
1672–95. Brickmaker’s Lament., in Roxb. Ball., II. 40.
| A Court there was call’d, | |
| The cryer he bawl’d, | |
| And there with his *flounder-mouth loudly he yaul’d. |
1663. Cowley, Cutter of Coleman St., IV. vi. She will not let me touch the Nail of her little Finger, and rails at me like a *Flounder-mouth’d Fish-woman with a Face like Billingsgate.
1724. Mrs. M. Davys, Reform’d Coquet (1752), 110. You great Flounder-mouth’d Sea-Calf.
1717. in S. Dale, Hist. Harwich, Tab. xiv. The Bottle-Head or *Flounders-Head-Whale.
