kerflooey

American  

[ker-floo-ee] / kərˈflu i /

adverb

1. Informal. in go kerflooey, to cease functioning, especially suddenly and completely; fall apart; fail.

   As soon as the storm hit, every light in town went kerflooey.

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Etymology

Origin of kerflooey

see origin at ker-, flooey

Explanation

To go kerflooey is to fail or go wrong, sometimes in a spectacular way. From a glitching laptop to a car that leaves you stranded in the middle of the road, we've all had moments when things went kerflooey. The word kerflooey doesn't have a formal root, but its meaning is written right into its sound: It belongs to a family of nonsense slang words — like blooey or flooey — that mimic the noise of something breaking down. The ker- "prefix" is a classic linguistic trick used in onomatopoeia (think kerplunk or kersplat) to add emphasis to the sound of an impact. It gives flooey that little extra punch, helping kerflooey capture the chaotic energy of things falling apart.

Example Sentences

“He thought when everything went kerflooey, this is where he would go. The island itself is so beautiful. There’s an area called Chieftain’s Leap, with soaring cliffs, where peregrine falcons make their nests.”

From New York Times • Jun. 30, 2023

It has to do with something that economists call the “transversality condition”—easier to remember if you think of it as the kerflooey problem.

From BusinessWeek • Jan. 7, 2015

The transversality condition is the constraint in the program that nothing can be projected to go to infinity—i.e., go kerflooey.

From BusinessWeek • Jan. 7, 2015

As an ill-fated staging of “A Christmas Carol” tucked into Seattle Repertory Theatre’s holiday farce “Inspecting Carol” goes kerflooey, the laughs multiply.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 30, 2012

Sell 7.8 million cars, as Toyota did worldwide in 2009 — a horrible year for the industry — and there are billions of new parts with the potential to go kerflooey.

From Time • Feb. 11, 2010