floored

1. 1
   adjectivecolloquialfiguratively

   Greatly amazed or surprised, often to the point of being unable to react.

   She was absolutely floored by the size of the inheritance.

   When the results came in, the analysts sat there floored.

   Similarstunned, astonished, amazed, astounded, staggered

   Note

   Surprise felt as a blow: the figure is of being knocked flat, and the word stays informal. It takes intensifiers comfortably (absolutely floored, completely floored), usually with by naming the cause. Keep it apart from the "silenced by a retort" meaning. There the person is beaten in an exchange and left without a reply; here they are simply astonished, often by good news.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of floor.

   Her blunt answer floored the entire panel.

   The workers floored the loft before winter set in.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty here. It serves the simple past (the answer floored them) and the participle after have or be (had floored, was floored). Nearly every use of the verb takes an object: floors are laid, opponents knocked down, pedals pushed, listeners silenced. So the passive participle readily hardens into an adjective and can even be graded (more floored, most floored), describing a state rather than an action.

3. 3
   adjective

   Describing a pedal pressed to its limit, especially an accelerator pushed down for maximum speed.

   The accelerator stayed floored as the racer entered the straightaway.

   Even with the pedal floored, the old truck barely climbed the hill.

   Note

   Drivers' slang, and it stays casual: the image is of a pedal pressed until it meets the floor of the car. The pedal or accelerator is usually what is floored, and the word most often describes a moment of full acceleration. A careful technical description would say the throttle was fully open; floored belongs in talk about the driving.

4. 4
   adjective

   Struck down or brought level with the floor.

   He was floored in the third round and counted out.

   The troublemaker was floored by the bouncer's single blow.

   Similardecked

5. 5
   adjective

   Brought down to the ground.

   Caught off balance, she was floored by a single shove.

   The charging ram left the boy floored in the mud.

   Similarflattened

6. 6
   adjective

   Having had a floor laid or fitted, or a floor covering put down.

   The barn was floored with wide pine planks last spring.

   Once the loft was fully floored, they began moving furniture in.

   Similarboarded

7. 7
   adjectivecolloquialfiguratively

   Finished or done for; utterly defeated.

   With its funding cut, the project was floored before it even launched.

   He knew he was floored the moment the auditors arrived.

   Similarfinished, doomed, beaten

8. 8
   adjective

   Left speechless by an answer or retort that settles the matter.

   The lawyer was floored by the witness's calm, precise reply.

   Floored by the rebuttal, he had no follow-up question ready.

   Similarstumped, nonplussed, silenced, dumbfounded

9. 9
   adjectivecolloquialfiguratively

   Overpowered or overwhelmed.

   The garrison was floored by the sheer number of besiegers.

   Floored by exhaustion, the runners collapsed past the finish line.

   Similaroverwhelmed, overpowered, overcome, crushed

10. 10
    adjective

    Set so that it cannot fall below a fixed minimum value.

    The interest rate is floored at two percent under the contract.

    In the model, any negative output is floored at zero.

    Oppositecapped

    Note

    A modeler's and mathematician's term, the natural partner of capped. A floored quantity may rise freely, but any value that would fall below the bound is replaced by the bound itself, an operation often called clamping. The minimum follows at (floored at zero, floored at two percent). Do not confuse it with the floor function, which rounds a number down to an integer rather than imposing a minimum.

11. 11
    adjective

    Hung near the base of a wall, close to the floor.

    The long tapestries were floored beneath the windows, almost touching the ground.

    Floored at the room's edge, the panels guided visitors toward the exit.

    Note

    Exhibition jargon, and a slightly unkind one: a floored picture was hung low on the wall, near the base, where visitors could hardly see it. The usage is dated and informal, a piece of gallery talk rather than general vocabulary. Outside that setting, readers will almost always take the word in one of its figurative meanings, such as the "amazed" meaning.

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