0 present participle of flail
1 (especially of arms and legs) to move energetically in an uncontrolled way:
This seems evident from the flailing and wailing of an infant in acute pain.
No orchestra takes the first as fast as the marked 100; timpanists couldn't buy insurance for brachial failure from the prescribed flailing.
Cordal rupture was observed in seven patients (12.5%), and three of them with marked flailing of the leaflets were referred for surgery.
They are flailing about and are desperately out of touch.
He was flailing for something on which to cling to avoid the accusation of total absurdity.
He seemed to be flailing around helplessly.
In the 1890s farm workers burnt the threshing machines because they thought that those modern inventions would do them out of their winter work of flailing corn.
It is part of the general atmosphere of a government at once decaying and flailing with increasing bad temper against any criticism of their own worsening performance.
