flatline

British

/ ˈflætˌlaɪn /

verb

to die or be so near death that the display of one's vital signs on medical monitoring equipment shows a flat line rather than peaks and troughs
to remain at a continuous low level

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

A closer look at its weekly chart shows that it decisively broke above its 50 week simple moving average, which is now starting to flatline, in late February.

From Barron's • Mar. 24, 2026

You’re going up, up, up, and then you flatline.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 18, 2026

New bars that had showed early promise began to flatline.

From BBC • Mar. 6, 2026

Headline inflation could flatline through next year, and is only expected to return to the BOT’s 1%-3% target range by early 2027.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 8, 2025

Node:go root, Next:go-faster stripes, Previous:go flatline, Up:= G = go root vi.

From The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Steele, Guy L.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023