Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To botch; bungle.
- n. The act or an instance of botching or bungling: "Their literature leans toward a comedy of small social flubs and withered chastity” ( James Wolcott).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
- n. An error; a mistake in the performance an action.
- v. transitive To goof, fumble, or err in the performance of an action.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make a mess of, destroy or ruin
- n. an embarrassing mistake
Etymologies
- Possibly suggested by fluff and flop. US; as verb from 1924, noun from 1953. (Wiktionary)
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“WooMe says the photo flub is just an honest mistake.”
“The real reason was to erase any doubt about his power, after what some called the flub heard round the world.”
“Ms. Trye says her business partners dismissed the incident as a minor flub, which is one reason why she's since dissolved the partnership and today runs Trye”
The Wall Street Journal: For Some Bosses, Tough Love Isn't Easy to Give
“The file name flub was discovered by The Washington Post”
“Mayor Bloomberg called this yet another "flub" in a long line of mistakes.”
The Huffington Post: Confusion Grips Board Of Elections As General Election Looms
“Obama did kind of flub the Rockefeller reference, but he did it in a sly way that was factually correct but left the audience with the incorrect impression the the current Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, voted against the war in Iraq.”
“You may want to start putting quotation maks around the word "flub" and "gaffe".”
“I have to believe that the Chief Justice's "flub" ... by John Sanchez Jr. on Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009 at 7: 10: 41 PM”
“It surprises me how many people would be willing to subject themselves or their children to some makeshift vaccination now, considering the last Swine Flu debacle, the MMR Autism link and the recent Baxter 'flub'.”
“Memo to TV networks: There's nothing hackers like better than replays showing tour pros are human — and that they "flub" and "stab" short shots like the rest of us.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘flub’.
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Situation Normal
inspired by Mistakes Were Made. Words for things going wrong in a manner particularly violent, stupid, soul-crushing, boggling, grandiose, or any combination of these qualities.
writeoff, wreck, bust, washout, turkey, untergang, undoing, total loss, flop, muck up, louse-up, goof-up and 156 more...
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Sound Effects You Didn't Know You Needed
Lesser-known onomatopoeias (or things that sound like they ought to be onomatopoeias but aren't), ripe for use in parodies of the Adam West Batman series.
gloomth, spilth, glunch, flub, spramp, sough, gorp, guff, tump, kerrang, bork, flan and 12 more...
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Incorrectum
Mistakes, Errors and Accidents.
nihilartikel, solecism, bevue, corrigendum, acyrology, cacoepy, fido, hamartithia, jeofail, mésalliance, mumpsimus, pseudochronism and 63 more...
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Dean Koontz Life Expectancy
Words I'm learning or investigating that I found by reading Life Expectancy (not all words are in the book).
chutzpah, luminous, torchieres, dunderheaded, inane, lummox, fox-trot, rumba, cha-cha, tango, swing, flub and 37 more...
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Misdaub and Other Blunders
misdaub, botch, bungle, misconstrue, lapse, miscalculation, flub, gaffe, underestimation, boner, indecorum, misstate and 28 more...
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Favorites
disparage, partisan, cupidity, hokum, tussle, odious, dastardly, overture, plane, chronic, peering, peer and 328 more...
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LWC's Words
spork, heteroskedasticity, kurtosis, eigenspace, smithian, skewness, montanan, whoremonger, mellifluous, fishwife, papist, romanist and 142 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, F
felony, frolic, fend, fuselage, farthingale, freewheeling, frigorific, flummery, fancypants, felsitic, flagstone, flageolet and 295 more...
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edes's Words
table talk, tuneful, bestrewn, determinate fashion, unpretending, personage, duly impressed, shirring, caw, hatchet job, gummy, comely and 225 more...
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The Last Werewolf
This novel by Glen Duncan, aside from being a ripping yarn and beautifully written, is just littered with words that I had to look up and discover that often his use of the word not only fitted per...
gurns, bok, chimney breast, dichotomy, Platonic form, filthy, Platonic Form, mathematics, BAM, skirls, clarity, blundering and 298 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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kevincooper's Words
prosopopeia, lisle, magisterial, zeitgeist, zeugma, bloviate, apocryphal, bon mot, cacophony, euphony, brigandier, micturition and 313 more...
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Words i had to look up
hermeneutics, flimflam, semi-parodic, motes, susurrations, phantasm, egregiously, monoglot, galluptious, exigency, agrimony, gibbous and 111 more...
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Amusing words
interesting words
bonce, furcate, tapioca, tillage, desalinate, garish, litmus, roadhog, azoic, haberdasher, imbroglio, polliwog and 802 more...
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Spam Names
Interesting words that came to me in spam emails in the "From" field. Read in pairs by order added, add the initial of your choice, and you'll get a list of "names."
menominee, burbled, abrasives, barrister, unfortunates, strolls, appareled, uncles, removal, elusive, significance, described and 180 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for flub.
wryanlb IN the Knight Storm Drum and Bugle Corps in the Late 1990's, a "flub" was a marching bass drum with one head removed and mounted horizontally Oct 1, 2011