kerflooey

American  

[ker-floo-ee] / kərˈflu i /

adverb

go kerflooey

1. Informal.  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

ker-, flooey

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

“It’s like my cells went kerflooey last year when they met Covid,” she said, and the “vaccine said, ‘Wait, you dopes, that isn’t how you fight this, do it this way.’”

From New York Times

“It’s like my cells went kerflooey last year when they met COVID-19,” Gross said, and the “vaccine said, ‘Wait, you dopes, that isn’t how you fight this; do it this way.’”

From Seattle Times

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

From BusinessWeek

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