flounder around

flounder around

To have a hard time doing something or making progress. She expected to move on to greater success, but ever since she left that popular show, she's just been floundering around.
See also: around, flounder
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

flounder around

to struggle or wallow around. The whole company is just floundering around and getting nowhere. The horse floundered around, trying to get across the soggy pasture.
See also: around, flounder
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • able to do
  • able to do it
  • appear to
  • a mystery to (one)
  • be in high spirits
  • be in high/low spirits
  • a piece of the action
  • a piece/slice of the action
  • a change of heart
  • bit of the action
References in periodicals archive
Weeks turn into months, turn into years, and still the grieving are left to flounder around, ignored and in pain.
For years, spear fishermen have feasted on flounder around inshore wrecks in April.
"Cuts right now may not affect [the Newtown Creek site] in the immediate future, but the fear is that if the Superfund program is defunded to the point where it doesn't have the resources to continue to drive the process forward, it will just flounder around and they'll never get to that next step where a budget has been confirmed," said Aziz.
"As they flounder around it's inevitable that they're going to put someone's nose out of joint and, as we know, a loving relationship often starts with finding someone really annoying."
I'd teach this before I'd let a salesperson flounder around on Facebook.
Summary: The deepest end of a pool is no place to flounder around. The do's and don'ts of swimming.
EVERY so often we're faced with decisions or choices where the outcome can be significant, even potentially life-changing, and we can flounder around, uncertain of the way ahead.
Such visionary business executives are following this model right now while others flounder around trying to figure out how to fund mega-billion-dollar Mars plans.
Could one ever imagine that the country would flounder around in a rudderless fashion, that it would be ruled by a directionless political disposition that has no vision about where they want Pakistan to go and no clue about how to address the countless problems that the nation faces?
CORRINNE Wicks - who plays Ella - is another one of those rather unconvincing, posh actresses who keep turning up in Emmerdale only to flounder around looking for something to do.
After all there's no point going to all the trouble of fitting a vast wardrobe just to flounder around in the gloom.
But all that changed now you are no longer here, I flounder around, my identity no longer clear, No longer a wife but a widow woman I fear - Now in confusion, each day I face
I tried another class in which the instructor made us flounder around in a glass-walled room while battling giant inflatable balls: the moves we were instructed to do were so awkward and uncomfortable that I became suspicious that the instructor was selling tickets to onlookers.
And so, in modern dress, the cast flounder around looking for some harbour, some point of anchor, a haven in which this distinctly 1930s comedy can put down roots and create laughter.
You don't, have to flounder around to get the facts of flatfish: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has (tone it all for you in its latest Globefish Research study, The World Market for Flatfish.