flounderling

English

Etymology

From flounder +‎ -ling.

Noun

flounderling (plural flounderlings)

1. A small or young flounder
   • 1918, Richard Darwin Ware, Rediscoveries, page 102:

     On such an one I came
     All inadvertently,
     Splashing the shallows
     Where Atlantic ebb
     Was making bare
     The flats,
     As when one
     Wading
     Sets unguarded step
     Upon a lurking
     Flounderling.

   • 1979, John L. Culliney, The forests of the sea: life and death on the Continental Shelf, page 90:

     At first flounderlings are thin-bodied but typically fishlike in other respects. Then suddenly striking anatomical changes take place, and the creature's behavior becomes fixed for an essentially two-dimensional way of life.