clusterfuck
verbEtymology From cluster + fuck. Reportedly coined by Hippie poet Ed Sanders as Mongolian Cluster Fuck. First use appears c. 1965 in East Village Other.
clusterfuck
nounUK /ˈklʌs.təˌfʌk/ · US /ˈklʌs.tɚˌfʌk/
Etymology From cluster + fuck. Reportedly coined by Hippie poet Ed Sanders as Mongolian Cluster Fuck. First use appears c. 1965 in East Village Other.
1
Idiomatic, Slang, Vulgar A chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong, often caused by communication failure, a complex environment, or incompetence.
- [Colonel Meyers:] That's for sure. What's your assessment of this exercise? [Highway:] It's a cluster fuck.1986, Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge, IMDB tt0091187:
- 1989: P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell "Mongolian Cluster Fuck" is the technical term journalists use for a preplanned, wholly scripted, news-free event.
4 more examples
- 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 fuck1990, Stephen King, Dark Half, →ISBN, page 151:
- 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 […]1994, James O'Barr, Alex Proyas, The Crow:
- 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 […]1995, John Barnes, Mother of Storms:
- 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, Ray Kopp, Thunder in the Night: A Sailor's Perspective on Vietnam, →ISBN, page 87:
- Synonyms
- car crash, comedy of errors, debacle, dumpster fire, dysfunction, fiasco, FUBAR, goatfuck, goat rope, gong show, imbroglio, omnishambles, quagmire, SNAFU, train wreck, CF, Charlie Foxtrot, cluster, clusterball, clusterbumble, fustercluck
- Derived terms
- CF, Charlie Foxtrot, cluster, clusterball, clusterbumble, clusterbùrach, clusterfucked, clusterfuckery, fustercluck