Word.ws English Dictionary

cock up

cock up verb: to ruin (something) unintentionally; to fuck up, mess up, or screw up.

Verb

cock up (third-person singular simple present cocks up, present participle cocking up, simple past and past participle cocked up)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, ambitransitive, mildly, slang) To ruin (something) unintentionally; to fuck up, mess up, or screw up.
    • It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them.1876 May – 1877 July, Anthony Trollope, “‘Wonderful Bird!’”, in The American Senator […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1877, →OCLC, page 282
    • I'd take the stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him—as I done many a time before. The mother, you know, she cocks him up with this and that. . . .1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 146

cock up meaning in Tamil

cock up in Tamil

பன்றிச்சேத்தான், எழுச்சியெழுத்து

Synonyms of cock up

Forms of cock up

third-person singular presentcocks up
present participlecocking up
past participlecocked up
pastcocked up

Origin of cock up

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Dictionary of Forces' Slang (1948). The OED suggests that it derives ultimately from the noun cock, but gives no further detail. The nature of the earliest citation suggests that this expression entered the wider language from military slang, making etymologies from typesetting or archery (see alternate meanings of cock-up) unlikely. One proposal is that the phrase originated describing an arrangement of the yards of a square-rigged vessel in port. Modern folk etymology has sometimes suggested that "cock-up" refers to a male erection, or to the phrase "cacked up", but neither is supported.

Words formed from cock up

Questions about cock up

What does cock up mean?
Cock up means to ruin (something) unintentionally; to fuck up, mess up, or screw up.
What is cock up in Tamil?
Cock up in Tamil is பன்றிச்சேத்தான், எழுச்சியெழுத்து. See Cock up meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is cock up?
Cock up is a verb.
What is the past tense of cock up?
The past tense of cock up is cocked up.

Words near cock up in the dictionary

  1. cock teases
  2. cock throwing
  3. cock throwings
  4. cock tip
  5. cock tips
  6. cock up
  7. cock warming
  8. cock watch
  9. cock watched
  10. cock watches
  11. cock watching

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cock up (page history and authors); cock up (Tamil Wiktionary) (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-cock up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cock up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cock_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.