flailing

adjective

flail·​ing ˈflā-liŋ 

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

Vivid dreams made him lash out at me in his sleep with kicks and flailing arms.

—Jeremy Clarke

… the crowd erupts and the mosh pit pushes flailing bodies towards the stage.

—Samantha O'Connor

2

a

: beset by difficulties : struggling

a flailing economy

… phoned a friend to vent about his flailing marriage …

—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

Examples of flailing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The devolution of the USA Network, where Suits first aired, tells the story of a flailing medium. —Time, 11 Aug. 2023

In other words, there’s an immense gulf between the righteous, self-certain, swaggering American nationalist patriotism conservatives cherish—and the flailing, dysfunctional, all-but-delusional country that conservatives daily deliver to U.S. kids. —Time, 12 July 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1882, in the meaning defined at sense 1