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🥽 Swimming fins 🐢 Animal limb 🏠 Property seller
flipper

flipper

10 3.1
A broad flat limb that animals like seals and turtles use to swim
  • noun
  • /ˈflɪpər/
translation icon : aleta
  • To our astonishment, not only did the seals' flippers glow, but so did the rest of their bodies.
  • hind flippers
  • front flippers

Examples

  • He'd spotted a whale lolling on its side, one flipper in the air, maybe twenty feet away.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Then, using her hind flippers alternately, she scoops out sand and flings it aside.

    Academic text (1995)

  • We would see a blow or a flipper, motor up close, and then the whale would dive away.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Let's check out those flippers in the water, all right?

  • The baby green sea turtle waved her tiny flippers as she swam toward the surface.

  • One manatee was missing a flipper after getting tangled in a fishing net.

  • He watched in awe as the whale used its massive flipper to splash water playfully.

Compounds

square flipper
  • Archaic
9.9

A medium-sized Arctic seal with whiskers on each side of its nose, also called the bearded seal

How Mobile

to wing
61 3.9
leg
∞ 1.0
limb
210 1.0
arm
∞ 1.0
flipper
10 3.1
stump
47 3.0

Surface Forms

flipper singular
flippers plural

Morphology

flipper = flip (semi-transparent) = flip + er

Formed from the verb 'flip' + '-er', but the anatomical meaning 'paddle-like limb' is not directly inferable by all learners from 'flip'.

Etymology

Flipper is formed from flip ('to move with a quick sweep') and -er ('thing that does'), just like the swimming tool. Imagine a turtle or seal using a broad limb to 'flip' through the water, so a flipper is a flat limb made for swimming.