Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an error, a mistake, bungling, incompetence.

1941		‘A Note On Drumming And Bugling’ in M. Page Kiss Me Goodnight, Sgt.-Major (1973) 57: Stand to attention you raw-arsed recruit. / You’ve gone and made a fuck-up of the general salute.
1965		H.S. Thompson letter 18 Apr. in Proud Highway (1997) 504: A giant Establishment fuckup by a Chancellor named Strong, who has since resigned.
1974		V.E. Smith Jones Men 204: He don’t want no fuck-ups.
1984		Flame : a Life on the Game 37: They ended up making a bigger fuck-up of it.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 142: Contradictions, wrong turns and just plain fuck-ups.
2003		T. Dorsey Stingray Shuffle 314: There’s been a big fuck-up, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
2004		L. Redhead Peepshow [ebook] I have to apologise for the whole scene. What a fuck-up.
2011		J.J. DeCeglie Drawing Dead [ebook] How many guys you know get laid on the biggest fuck-up of a night in their life?
2011		H. Ellison Introduction in Pulling a Train’ [ebook] Doctors are lucky. Their fuckups get buried under headstones.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 18: Jimmy [...] wondered if one day she’d chalk their collaborative fuck-up down to experience.
2018		C. Hammer Scrublands [ebook] ‘I’m going to keep Jack’s little fuck-up out of the investigation’.
2019		S.M. Jones Lives Laid Away [ebook] ‘This new organization doesn’t much like fuck-ups’.
2020		D. Whish-Wilson Shore Leave 170: The game was up, the fuck-up complete.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 313: I kept thinking of fatal fuckups.

2. a bungler, an incompetent, a hopeless failure.

1945		in T. Shibutani Derelicts of Company K (1978) 196: A Company K man replied, ‘Oh, I’m with the rest of the fuck-ups.’.
1951		E. Hemingway letter 5 Mar. in Baker Sel. Letters (1981) 721: To me he is an enormously skilled fuck-up.
1961		(con. early 1950s) J. Peacock Valhalla 377: The head rollers felt that he, Hugh, was not doing his job – not if he had an inveterate fuckup in his platoon and could do nothing with him.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 90: You a fuck-up, but you my kid brother.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 173: This private eye he knew who was a real fuck up.
1990		H. Kureishi Buddha of Suburbia 8: I don’t know anything. I’m going to be a fuck-up.
1996		P. Howard The Joy (2015) [ebook] There are no friends in this game [...] just other fuck-ups with the same needs as you.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 186: I’m the family fuck-up.
2002		Simon & Burns ‘The Detail’ Wire ser. 1 ep. 2 [TV script] You ask for men, they send you drunks and fuck-ups .
2004		T. Winton ‘Family’ Turning (2005) 181: You’re a fuck-up.
2011		IOL News 🌐 He describes himlsef as ’a f**k-up waiting to happen’.
2012		C. Stella Rough Riders 26: ‘He another fuckup?’ ‘He alright’.
2015		G. Disher Heat [ebook] ‘[S]ad, fat, hairy fuck-ups who’ve decided to rat on the boss’.
2019		M. Herron Joe Country [ebook] ‘Fuck-ups, basket-cases, druggies and drunks’.
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 21: [H]er fuck-up of a son’s trying to throw a lay on a girl probably just got out of her training bra.
2023		M. Herron Secret Hours 218: ‘[H]e’s a fuck-up [...] And fuck-ups are dangerous’.