A worse failure than a Fizzle. To flunk is to fail completely, and he who thus fails is a flunkey. College slang. See examples 1846–54 in B. H. Hall’s ‘College Words.’

1

1843.  That day poor Fullman was flunked, and was never again reinstated in the good graces of our officer.—Yale Lit. Mag., ix. 61 (Dec.).

2

1846.  Yale Banger. (N.E.D.)

3

1849.  Flunk. To decline peremptorily, and then to whisper, “I had it all, except that confounded little place.”—Yale Lit. Mag., xiv. 144 (Jan.).

4

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

5

1852.  Awaiting the sure Nemesis of a fizzle in esse, and a flunk in posse.—Yale Lit. Mag., xvii. 141 (Feb.).

6

1852.  What six penny rushes—what complacent fizzles—what unmitigated flunks are reserved for rainy mornings?—Id., xvii. 342 (Aug.).

7

1854.  

        I am a college pony,
  Coming from a Junior’s room;
The ungrateful wretch has cast me
  Forth to wander in the gloom.
I bore him safe through Horace,
  Saved him from the flunkey’s doom.
Id., xx. 76 (Nov.).    

8

1888.  All the boys done bully, but Corporal Johnson—he flinked. The way he flinked was, to wait till the boys had drove the Injuns two miles, and then he hollered, ‘Gin it to ’em!’ and the boys don’t think that a man that would flink that way ought to have corporal’s straps.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 680. [This is perhaps a variant of flinch.]

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