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• s  with feet flat on the ground; not tiptoe
• s  unprepared and unable to react quickly
  the new product caught their competitors flat-footed
• s  having broad flat feet that usually turn outward
  a slow flat-footed walk
• s  without reservation
  a flat-footed refusal

• Sources in the Pentagon, White House and Congress grumble that the CIA and the nation's other intelligence bureaucracy were caught flat-footed by the Sept.
• VOIP's young upstarts have already caught the giants flat-footed.
• When the open standards of the Internet changed the game, Microsoft was initially caught flat-footed.

News & Articles

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• Markets steady as investors ready for Fed
  Markets were fairly flat-footed ahead of a keenly awaited policy statement from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The central bank wraps up a two-day policy meeting later Wednesday and investors are looking to ...
  June 19, 2013 - Associated Press via Yahoo! News

Quotes

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• Roberto Luongo in USA Today
  They're desperate, and we knew that coming in,said Luongo, who was coming off a 3-1 home win against San Jose. "After the big game on Saturday, we got caught a little flat-footed."
• Tim Connolly in ESPN
  Daniel Paille made a great play because I was really caught flat-footed on the breakout,Connolly said. "He was able to strip the guy of the puck and left it there for me."
• Pascal Leclaire in ESPN
  I don't know, we got away from our game plan,Leclaire said. "We're a good team when we play simple and we keep everything on the sides. We tried to do a little too much and we got caught flat-footed."