flop / fläp/ • v. (flopped, flop·ping) 1. [intr.] fall, move, or hang in a heavy, loose, and ungainly way: black hair flopped across his forehead. ∎  sit or lie down heavily or suddenly in a specified place, esp. when very tired: Liz flopped down into the armchair. ∎ inf. rest or sleep in a specified place: I'm going to flop here for the night.2. [intr.] inf. (of a performer or show) be completely unsuccessful; fail totally: prime-time dramas that flopped in the U.S. market.3. [tr.] Photog. invert (a negative) so that the right and left sides of a photograph are reversed: a cover photograph of downtown Pittsburgh that we inadvertently flopped.• n. 1. a heavy, loose, and ungainly movement, or a sound made by it: they hit the ground with a flop. ∎ inf. a cheap place to sleep.2. inf. a total failure: the play had been a flop.

flop
1. A unit of computational cost associated with matrix and vector operations. The term is widely used in algorithms for numerical linear algebra. A flop is approximately the amount of work required to compute, for example in Fortran, an expression of the form S = S + A(I,J) ∗ X(J)

i.e. a floating point multiplication and a floating point addition, along with the effort involved in subscripting. Thus for example, Gaussian elimination for a system of order n requires a number of flops of order n³ (see linear algebraic equations). As computer design and architecture change, this unit of cost may well undergo modification.

2. Short for floating-point operation. See also flops.

flop vb. XVII. var. of FLAP.