Word.ws English Dictionary

arse about face

arse about face adjective: placed or arranged the opposite way to the way it should be.

Adjective

arse about face (not comparable)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang) Placed or arranged the opposite way to the way it should be.
    • No wonder it doesn't look right mate, you've got the whole thing arse about face.
    • It’s absurd, topsy-turvy, arse-about-face. But shit, nonetheless, demands a reading, and vice versa.2003, Ian Sansom, The Truth About Babies: From A-Z, Granta, →ISBN, page 256
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang) Arranged in a confused or haphazard way; muddled.
    • Use them to inpregnant^([sic]) a woman: muddle up past and future, in-breed across time-zones, turn the family tree into a tangled bush, roots and shoots all arse about face.2006, Liz Jensen, Egg Dancing, page 212

Adverb

arse about face (not comparable)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang) In a manner that is opposite to or the reverse of the way it should be, backwards.
    • We've been looking at it arse about face.2005, Sam Smith, The End of Science Fiction, page 179
    • ‘Look, Mary. That chap is sitting arse about face. He's having a laugh. He can't be serious.’
      ‘Don't be so critical, George. More than likely it's his first time on a horse.’2011, Russell Shaw, Easy: A Dogs Life, page 54
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang) In a confused or haphazard manner.
    • Meanwhile the Law, as usual, tumbles arse about face: the killings multiply; the cops are clueless and duly arrest the wrong man.2005, John Orr, Hitchcock and 20th Century Cinema, page 67

Examples of arse about face in a sentence

  • Fucking arse about face this fucking place.2004, Mick Lee, Scream If You Want To Go Faster, Authors On Line Ltd, →ISBN, page 78:
  • Like we didn't move here for my job, we came here (for ...) to become a student and study for a degree and it's arse about face.2006, Peter North, quoting an anonymous member of a local currency scheme, “Self-Analysis: Do Members see LETS as a Social Movement?”, in...
  • We've got it so arse about face in modern society.2010, Sean Gallacher, The Eskimo, page 27:

Forms of arse about face

alternative formarse-about-face
alternative formarse about front
alternative formarse about tip
alternative formarse about tit

Questions about arse about face

What does arse about face mean?
Arse about face means placed or arranged the opposite way to the way it should be.
How do you use arse about face in a sentence?
Fucking arse about face this fucking place.
What part of speech is arse about face?
Arse about face can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near arse about face in the dictionary

  1. arschins
  2. Arscott
  3. Arscotts
  4. arse
  5. arse about
  6. arse about face
  7. arse about tit
  8. arse antlers
  9. arse around
  10. arse bandit
  11. arse bandits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: arse about face (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 arse about face.ogg.

Cite this entry: “arse about face.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arse_about_face. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.