flail

1. 1.

   give a thrashing to; beat hard

   Synonymsthrashthreshlam

   Broaderbeat
2. 2.

   move like a flail; thresh about

   “Her arms were flailing”

   Synonymsthresh

   Broaderbeat

1. 1.

   an implement consisting of handle with a free swinging stick at the end; used in manual threshing

   Broaderimplement

Other forms of flail

plural

flails·

past tense

flailed·

present participle

flailing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about flail

What does flail mean?

flail means "give a thrashing to; beat hard". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in flail?

flail has 1 syllable: flail. In IPA it is /ˈfleɪl/.

What is another word for flail?

Close synonyms include thrash, thresh, lam, thresh. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is flail a common word?

flail is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.