U.S. [Cf. FLINK, FUNK.]
1. 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.
b. College slang. To fail utterly in an examination.
1848. Yale Lit. Mag., June, XIII. 322, ‘The Song of Sighs.’
| Flunking so gloomily, | |
| Crushed by contumely | |
| And inhumanity— | |
| Burning insanity | |
| Firing his look. |
1853. Amherst Indicator, I. 253. They know that a man who has flunked, because too much of a genius to get his lesson, is not in a state to appreciate joking.
2. trans. To cause to ‘flunk’; to pluck.
Mod. The professor flunked me in mathematics.
Hence Flunking ppl. a.
1848. Yale Gallinipper, Nov. (B. H. Hall, College Words). See what a spot a flunking Soph’more made!
