#9: Flounder/Founder
Question:
If your ship fills with water and sinks, does it flounder or founder?
Answer: founder
How to remember it:
When something founders, it loses its foundation. (Founder and foundation have the same root.)
To founder is to collapse, sink, or fail.
One source of confusion here is that the meaning of the verb flounder is similar: to flounder is to struggle to move or get one's footing, or to proceed or act clumsily or ineffectually. People can flounder, but ships founder.
2 comments:
Bill, where are you getting all of this stuff???
I've forgotten the fewer or less one, and this one is new to me. It'd be interesting to see what else you have? (Personally, I'm wondering if further/farther is going to show--a lot of people don't seem to know the difference between those).
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