(v. i.) To fail, as on a lesson; to back out, as from an undertaking, through fear.
(v. t.) To fail in; to shirk, as a task or duty.
(n.) A failure or backing out
(n.) a total failure in a recitation.
Example Sentences:
(1) Even now, there is a sense that it could go either way, that we might pass this mammoth test or flunk it.
(2) The watchdog flunked the opportunity to extend the price cap to all those acknowledged to be stuck on over-priced standard variable tariffs and last summer dumped suggestions the big firms should be broken up.
(3) News that the eurozone had flunked its Greek test, again, sent the euro sliding (down half a cent to $1.275).
(4) In the nationwide panic over inheritance tax – David Cameron’s 2007 vote-winning pledge to raise the threshold to £1m is cited as the main reason why Gordon Brown flunked a decision to call an election – the only real winners have been the very well-off.
(5) Photograph: NIESR Updated at 4.27pm BST 4.23pm BST First it was Germany's banks ( 8.07am ) now it's America's car industry which is feeling the love from the ratings agencies... Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) BREAKING: Ford, Ford Motor credit raised to investment grade by S&P September 6, 2013 3.54pm BST Back in Europe, and the Open Europe thinktank has published an interesting theorette today - about how Germany's far left Die Linke party could hold the balance of power after the general elections on 22 September: This is how Merkel could flunk the elections: enter the Far Left It all relies on the fact that parties need to win 5% of the vote to win seats in the Bundestag, and Angela Merkel's coalition partners, the Free Democrats, are hovering close to the cliff-edge.
(6) If the prime minister flunks this energy-saving test, he will confirm the Sun's story, and look like the weak victim of the short-term pressures he once promised to fight.
(7) "The one test he had, he flunked," said a party apparatchik, referring to Johnson's defeat in the 2007 deputy leadership contest.
(8) He flunked the test and this was the turning point in the debate.
(9) Did I tell you I had just been thrown out for flunking four subjects?
(10) The banks that flunked out only need to raise an additional €2.5bn capital, although 16 others passed only by the skin of their teeth and will have to take measures to shore up their financial position.
(11) The manager, Gus Poyet, had suggested that his players were playing for their places in next Sunday's Capital One Cup final against Manchester City; this was an audition flunked.
(12) Mr Brown also accused Mr Cameron of flunking his "Clause 4 moment" over grammar schools, caving into his party instead of supporting his education spokesman.
(13) Well, mostly just the protagonist Chip Baskets (Galifianakis), a clown who flunks out of clown school in Paris – he enrolled without knowing French – and returns home to Bakersfield, California.
(14) He subsequently flunked out of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst after contracting gonorrhoea.
(15) Having come up with the idea and agreed to the targets, the banks then flunked the most important one, on lending to small businesses.
(16) In certain special situations in psychoanalytic treatment there is a need to mobilize ego strength: (1) those patients who are "so infantile" that they need ego strengthening to mature sufficiently to cope with their lives; (2) patients who regress partially during psychoanalysis and cannot progress without analytic intervention to help strengthen their ego; (3) those patients with a strong tendency toward regression whose egos need immediate strengthening in analysis to prevent an immobilizing regression; (4) those patients for whom a stressful reality situation so undermines their confidence that they fall into a severe regression and need to be helped out of this as an emergency to avoid permanent trouble, such as flunking out of school or getting fired from their jobs.
(17) Despite flunking his accountancy exams the first time round, Rake became Britain's best-paid accountant.
(18) The son of an affluent businessman, he flunked his way through school.
(19) In Brighton last week, Gordon Brown flunked it, preferring to stress spending pledges over coming austerity.
Shirk
Definition:
(v. t.) To procure by petty fraud and trickery; to obtain by mean solicitation.
(v. t.) To avoid; to escape; to neglect; -- implying unfaithfulness or fraud; as, to shirk duty.
(v. i.) To live by shifts and fraud; to shark.
(v. i.) To evade an obligation; to avoid the performance of duty, as by running away.
(n.) One who lives by shifts and tricks; one who avoids the performance of duty or labor.
Example Sentences:
(1) Others have found more striking-power, or more simple poetry, but none an interpretation at once so full (in the sense of histrionic volume) and so consistently bringing all the aspects together, without any shirking or pruning away of what is inconvenient.
(2) A new report is just another excuse for those in power to shirk responsibility, to blame the people they have already degraded once and who cannot defend themselves.
(3) Time at home, alone, without chores, is still often felt as shirking responsibility.
(4) He’s taking a lot of stick at the moment – as everyone is – but it is a measure of him that he fronts it up every day and doesn’t shirk it.
(5) Shirk said one-party China – a country most still associate with little more than economic success and autocratic governance – saw a chance to rebrand itself as a benevolent great power acting in the common good.
(6) Neville has work ahead; the good news is that he will not shirk it.
(7) While some bosses shirk from defending their personal pay deals, Horta-Osório – whose 10-strong management team cashed in on £23m through the same bonus scheme – does not.
(8) Schreiber points out that some of the debates against the ERA were about "masculinity run amok": "Phyllis Schlafly said if we were are treated as equals, then men will shirk their responsibilities," she notes.
(9) Poon said Beijing was attempting to shift the focus on to how much medical attention Liu was receiving to shirk responsibility for its “cold-blooded” treatment of the democracy activist.
(10) They chased every ball, never shirked a tackle and, when they needed a centre-forward to show composure and experience, they had a 32-year-old from Stoke City, with silver flecks in his hair, who passed the test with distinction.
(11) Focusing on glorifying and eternalising the leaders and taking refuge in God and inserting them into hidden shirk [idolatry] through immortalising ephemeral, temporary personalities.
(12) At the same time, we will not shirk from vigorously defending our right and proper role to expose wrongdoing in the public interest."
(13) Are workers seen as a burden, a cost, people who would rather skive and shirk responsibilities, and who have to be supervised rigorously at all times?
(14) Jones said Australia was engaging with the UN with goodwill on how best to tackle the crisis, and not on how to shirk its international responsibilities.
(15) As Republicans we will not shirk our responsibility and we believe that it is now necessary for us to take this lead in bringing the agreement to its conclusion.
(16) "My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.
(17) But he has never been one to shirk a challenge, choosing to serve in Vietnam so he could stay in the US after moving to New York in the 1960s.
(18) Some European partners are shirking from the task,” she said.
(19) However, human rights groups say Britain is shirking its legal responsibilities – fearful that the route could be seen as a “back door” to Britain – and coercing people into staying put while paying Cyprus to house and feed them.
(20) It’s not me shirking my responsibilities, I take internet security seriously, but I can’t always protect myself against an army of online fraud experts.