FLOP A TWENTY.  At the University of Vermont, to flop a twenty is to make a perfect recitation, twenty being the maximum mark for scholarship.

FLUMMUX.  Any failure is called a flummux.  In some colleges the word is particularly applied to a poor recitation.  At Williams College, a failure on the play-ground is called a flummux.

FLUMMUX.  To fail; to recite badly.  Mr. Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, has the word flummix, to be overcome; to be frightened; to give way to.

Perhaps Parson Hyme didn’t put it into Pokerville for two mortal hours; and perhaps Pokerville didn’t mizzle, wince, and finally flummix right beneath him.—­Field, Drama in Pokerville.

FLUNK.  This word is used in some American colleges to denote a complete failure in recitation.

This, O, [signifying neither beginning nor end,] Tutor H——­ said meant a perfect flunk.—­The Yale Banger, Nov. 10, 1846.

I’ve made some twelve or fourteen flunks.—­The Gallinipper, Dec. 1849.

  And that bold man must bear a flunk, or die,
  Who, when John pleased be captious, dared reply.
    Yale Tomahawk, Nov. 1849.

The Sabbath dawns upon the poor student burdened with the thought of the lesson, or flunk of the morrow morning.—­Ibid., Feb. 1851.

    He thought ... 
  First of his distant home and parents, tunc,
  Of tutors’ note-books, and the morrow’s flunk.
    Ibid., Feb. 1851.

  In moody meditation sunk,
  Reflecting on my future flunk.
    Songs of Yale, 1853, p. 54.

  And so, in spite of scrapes and flunks,
    I’ll have a sheep-skin too.
    Presentation Day Songs, June 14, 1854.

Some amusing anecdotes are told, such as the well-known one about the lofty dignitary’s macaronic injunction, “Exclude canem, et shut the door”; and another of a tutor’s dismal flunk on faba.—­Harv.  Mag., Vol.  I. p. 263.

FLUNK.  To make a complete failure when called on to recite.  A writer in the Yale Literary Magazine defines it, “to decline peremptorily, and then to whisper, ’I had it all, except that confounded little place.’”—­Vol.  XIV. p. 144.

They know that a man who has flunked, because too much of a genius to get his lesson, is not in a state to appreciate joking. —­Amherst Indicator, Vol.  I. p. 253.

Nestor was appointed to deliver a poem, but most ingloriously flunked.—­Ibid., Vol.  I. p. 256.

The phrase to flunk out, which Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, defines, “to retire through fear, to back out,” is of the same nature as the above word.

Why, little one, you must be cracked, if you flunk out before we begin.—­J.C.  Neal.

It was formerly used in some American colleges as is now the word flunk.