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flounder

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.01 sec.
flounder: see flatfish flatfish, common name for any member of the unique and widespread order Pleuronectiformes containing over 500 species (including the flounder, halibut, plaice, sole, and turbot), 130 of which are American.
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flounder

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Flounder (Platichthys)
(credit: F. Greenaway—Natural History Photographic Agency/EB Inc.)
Any of about 300 species of flatfishes (order Pleuronectiformes). When born, the flounder is bilaterally symmetrical, with an eye on each side, and it swims near the sea's surface. After a few days, it begins to lean to one side, and the eye on that side migrates to what eventually becomes the top side. With this development comes changes in bones, nerves, and muscles, and the underside loses its colour. As an adult, the flounder lives on the sea bottom with the eyed side on top.


flounder
1. a European flatfish, Platichthys flesus having a greyish-brown body covered with prickly scales: family Pleuronectidae: an important food fish
2. US and Canadian any flatfish of the families Bothidae (turbot, etc.) and Pleuronectidae (plaice, halibut, sand dab, etc.)

flounder [′flau̇n·dər]
(vertebrate zoology)
Any of a number of flatfishes in the families Pleuronectidae and Bothidae of the order Pleuronectiformes.


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"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable.
, depreciate, the delicate fat Milton oyster, the plaice sound and firm, the flounder as much alive as when in the water, the shrimp as big as a prawn, the fine cod alive but a few hours ago, or any other of the various treasures which those water-deities who fish the sea and rivers have committed to the care of the nymphs, the angry Naiades lift up their immortal voices, and the prophane wretch is struck deaf for his impiety.
The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise: but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours.
 
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