clusterfuck
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See also: cluster-fuck and cluster fuck
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From cluster + fuck. Reportedly coined in the 1960s by Hippie poet Ed Sanders as Mongolian Cluster Fuck.
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
clusterfuck (plural clusterfucks)
- (slang, vulgar) A chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong. It is often caused by incompetence, communication failure, or a complex environment.
- 1986, Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge, IMDB tt0091187
- [Colonel Meyers:] That's for sure. What's your assessment of this exercise? [Highway:] It's a cluster fuck.
- 1989: P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell p. 216
- "Mongolian Cluster Fuck" is the technical term journalists use for a preplanned, wholly scripted, news-free event.
- 1990, Stephen King, Dark Half[1], →ISBN, page 151:
- They had a name for something like this in the army—a cluster fuck. Yes. Good name. ... He was sitting here in the middle of a great big cluster fuck
- 1994: James O'Barr / Alex Proyas, The Crow
- A simple sweep-and-clear turned into a total clusterfuck: T-Bird, trying to explain to Eric how the situation escalated on Devil's Night […]
- 1995: John Barnes, Mother of Storms
- Please note also my request that henceforth I wish to be reminded of the possibility of a clusterfuck in any contingency plan or operations proposal […]
- 2004, Ray Kopp, Thunder in the Night: A Sailor's Perspective on Vietnam, →ISBN, p. 87
- My cousin was in the Army over here in '68. He says don't trust anybody to know what they're doing, calls it a cluster-fuck. Fucked-up-beyond-all-repair, FUBAR he says.
- 2004: Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide To Democracy Inaction
- […] and you will still only begin to get a sense of the constitutionally mandated clusterfuck that is the modern presidency.
- 2005: Charles W. Sasser, Patton's Panthers: The African-American 761st Tank Battalion in World War II
- It was a clusterfuck, a deadly clusterfuck. When the doughs finally got off the ground in some numbers and charged into the woods, the Krauts broke contact […]
- 2008, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Burn After Reading, IMDB tt0887883
- [CIA-Superior:] Okay. Okay. If he wakes up we'll worry about it then. Jesus, what a clusterfuck.
- 2013: Barbara Kruger: What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement in response to the Supreme v Married To The Mob battle
- 1986, Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge, IMDB tt0091187
Synonyms[edit]
- car crash (chiefly UK)
- CF
- Charlie Foxtrot
- cluster
- clusterball
- comedy of errors
- debacle
- dysfunction
- fiasco
- FUBAR
- goatfuck
- goat rope
- gong show
- imbroglio
- omnishambles
- quagmire
- SNAFU
- trainwreck (chiefly US)
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
a chaotic situation
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Verb[edit]
clusterfuck (third-person singular simple present clusterfucks, present participle clusterfucking, simple past and past participle clusterfucked)
- (vulgar) To fuck (something) up, to make a total mess of.