flipper vs flop

flipper

verb
  • To lift one or both flippers out of the water and slap the surface of the water. 

noun
  • Television remote control, clicker. 

  • A type of ball bowled by a leg spin bowler, which spins backwards and skids off the pitch with a low bounce. 

  • A flat lever in a pinball machine, triggered by the player to strike the ball and keep it in play. 

  • A kind of false tooth, usually temporary. 

  • A small flat used to support a larger one. 

  • Someone who flips, in the sense of buying a house or other asset and selling it quickly for profit. 

  • Someone who flips in any other sense, for example throwing a coin. 

  • In marine mammals such as whales, a wide flat limb, adapted for swimming. 

  • A flat, wide, paddle-like rubber covering for the foot, used in swimming. 

  • A kitchen spatula. 

flop

verb
  • To flip; to reverse (an image). 

  • To pretend to be fouled in sports, such as basketball, hockey (the same as to dive in soccer) 

  • To stay, sleep or live in a place. 

  • To fall heavily due to lack of energy. 

  • To strike about with something broad and flat, as a fish with its tail, or a bird with its wings; to rise and fall; to flap. 

  • To have (a hand) using the community cards dealt on the flop. 

  • To cause to drop heavily. 

  • To fail completely; not to be successful at all (of a movie, play, book, song etc.). 

intj
  • Indicating the sound of something flopping. 

adv
  • With a flopping sound. 

  • Right, squarely, flat-out. 

noun
  • The first three cards turned face-up by the dealer in a community card poker game. 

  • A ponded package of dung, as in a cow-flop. 

  • An incident of a certain type of fall; a plopping down. 

  • A flophouse. 

  • A complete failure, especially in the entertainment industry. 

  • One floating-point operation per second, a unit of measure of processor speed. 

How often have the words flipper and flop occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )