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fuck-up

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

7 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fuck-up", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "fuck-up" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "fuck-up" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

fuck up is aEnglishverb. It means: To make a mistake, to go wrong. Pronounced /ˈfʌkˌʌp/.

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Key facts for fuck up
PropertyValue
Headwordfuck up
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
IPA/ˈfʌkˌʌp/
Letters7
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

fuck up is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for fuck up is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfʌkˌʌp/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for fuck up in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is fuck up, spelled F-U-C-K- -U-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    To make a mistake, to go wrong.
  2. 2
    To botch or make a mess of.
  3. 3
    To injure or damage badly.
  4. 4
    To cause someone to become intoxicated or otherwise alter someone's mental state.
  5. 5
    To traumatise; to negatively affect the wellbeing of someone.
  6. 6
    Synonym of destroy (“to eat food quickly, hungrily or completely”)
  7. 7
    Ellipsis of shut the fuck up.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "fuck up"?
"fuck up" is spelled F-U-C-K- -U-P. The IPA pronunciation is /ˈfʌkˌʌp/.
What does "fuck up" mean?
As a verb, "fuck up" means: To make a mistake, to go wrong.
How do you pronounce "fuck up"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "fuck up" is /ˈfʌkˌʌp/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "fuck up" come from?
"fuck up" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.