the.com/flounder
a fish that rearranges its own face to lie flat and stare upward forever.
means To struggle clumsily and helplessly, thrashing about without making progress — or, as a noun, the flat fish that does exactly that.
from The fish-name comes from a Scandinavian source, related to Old Norse 'flydhra' and cognate with Swedish 'flundra,' all naming the flat bottom-dwelling fish. The verb 'to flounder' — to thrash and struggle — appeared later in English, possibly a blend of 'founder' (to sink or fail) with 'blunder,' its sound perhaps nudged by the image of a fish flapping helplessly out of water. So the floppy fish and the floundering struggler may have arrived by separate paths, then found each other irresistibly apt.
- eye migration
- one eye crawls across the skull during youth
- camouflage
- changes skin pattern to match seafloor in seconds
- both sides
- hatches symmetrical, then goes lopsided on purpose
- ambush diet
- buries itself, waiting to inhale passing prey
summer flounder — paralichthys dentatus, atlantic coast fish from maine to florida with both eyes on right side