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PlainSpell

flounce

/flaʊns/verb, noun

flounce is a verb meaning “To move in a bouncy, exaggerated manner” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-O-U-N-C-E and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 11 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does flounce mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To move in a bouncy, exaggerated manner.

  2. 2

    To depart in a dramatic, haughty way that draws attention to oneself.

    After failing to win the leadership election, he flounced dramatically.

  3. 3

    archaicTo flounder; to make spastic motions.

  4. 4

    To decorate with a flounce.

noun

  1. 1

    A strip of decorative material, usually pleated, attached along one edge; a ruffle.

  2. 2

    The act of flouncing; a dramatic departure.

  3. 3

    A row of corrugations, skin folds, or spines, on the hemipenis of a snake.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce flounce?

  • /flaʊns/

Flounce has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-flounce.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-flounce.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of flounce

  • flounces present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • flouncing participle, present
  • flounced participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is flounce?

Flounce appears about once in every 11 million words in written English, the 101,613th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Flounce in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Germanstolzieren (to move in exaggerated manner)
Frenchvolant (strip of decorative material along an edge)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does flounce come from?

Probably of North Germanic origin, from Norwegian flunsa (“hurry”), perhaps ultimately imitative. Or, perhaps formed on the pattern of pounce, bounce.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).