From Flopping Fish to Sinking Ships: Floundering and Foundering

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha and Grant.

Hello.

Who is this?

This is Candice calling from San Diego.

All right.

Hello, Candice.

How are you guys doing?

Excellent.

Awesome.

Me too.

Good.

Well, I’m calling you guys today because I’ve got an interesting instance, in fact two instances, of I think a case of really mixing up two words that are spelled really close to each other and sound a lot like each other, but I think really actually have very different meanings.

So what happened was I opened up our local newspaper early in the morning one morning, and in giant typeface I read the following headline, Universal Insurance Proposal Flounders.

And it really kind of woke me up really fast because I thought that that was a terrible mistake.

I thought that what the editor really meant to say was that universal insurance proposal founders.

I don’t know. What do you guys think of that?

Well, my question would be, has it completely failed already, or is it on the way to failing?

Well, I believe at the time when I read a bit of the article, it seemed that it was on the way to failing.

And then I think actually floundering is still the right word, because if it was foundering, that’s kind of a subjective way of a journalist saying that they think it’s going to fail, and perhaps they wouldn’t want to make that leap.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Well, what I did was I looked in the dictionary as soon as I got to work that morning, and I found that the connotations in the definitions for flounders I saw were sort of like what it sounds, like a fish that might be sort of frantically flopping, you know, under its own power.

When I looked at the definition for founders, all the connotations were sort of nautical.

And, you know, you imagine a little boat, you know, sort of steaming really hard through choppy water to get home to port.

So when I think of a legislative initiative, I think of that, you know, little boat in high seas.

I don’t, the way I do think of when I hear flounders is I imagine a big fish trying to flop itself up the capital steps.

So, that’s…

But you can see how they both could be used figuratively, right, rather than literally?

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Yeah, founder comes from a Latin word that means bottom, like in foundation.

-huh.

And so, it literally refers to sinking.

And flounder, I mean, I think of the fish, too, that way.

Yeah, but if an insurance proposal is floundering, it’s not quite yet dead, right?

I see.

It’s still…

But it’s still lying in the muck when the tide has fallen away and it’s not yet quite over with.

And if it’s foundering, then it’s about ready to be overcome by, what, the sea, the wind, the storms?

You two are so poetic. I’m so impressed.

Well, you know what? Something else would bear out what you’re saying, Grant.

I was watching the NBC Nightly News last night, and Brian Williams, the host of the news, said something about the economy headed for tougher times with the floundering housing market leading the way.

And so that would be another instance of what Grant is talking about with something sort of on the way to demise as opposed to having reached its demise.

Oh, yeah.

Let’s hope it’s floundering and not foundering, right?

I would hope so.

We’re all in trouble.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s an interesting distinction between those two.

There is a difference.

I appreciate the subtlety of your thought, though, because I could certainly see how you’d want to carefully choose that word so as to not give the wrong idea.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thanks for an interesting question, Candace.

You’re welcome, and thank you so much for having me.

All right, I hope we didn’t flounder too much.

No, I don’t think so, and thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Grant, what a difference an L makes, huh?

What the L?

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