Word.ws English Dictionary

fail upward

fail upward is the alternative form of fail upwards.

Meaning of fail upwards

Verb

fail upwards (third-person singular simple present fails upwards, present participle failing upwards, simple past and past participle failed upwards)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To advance in one's career despite failure or incompetence.
    • I got trapped in an absurd, "failing upwards" trajectory. Heathers got me work on a bigger film called Ford Fairlane. When that movie failed, I was given a post on an even bigger film, Hudson Hawk. After that one really, really failed, I was rewarded with the assignment of Batman Returns.1994, Gail O'Donnell, Michele Travolta, Making it in Hollywood: behind the success of 50 of today's favorite actors, screenwriters, producers, and directors, Sourcebooks, →ISBN, page 139

Forms of fail upward

third-person singular presentfails upward
present participlefailing upward
past participlefailed upward
pastfailed upward

Questions about fail upward

What is fail upward the alternative form of?
Fail upward is the alternative form of fail upwards.

Words near fail upward in the dictionary

  1. fail out
  2. fail over
  3. fail safe
  4. fail up
  5. fail up the ladder
  6. fail upward
  7. fail upwards
  8. fail whale
  9. fail whales
  10. fail'd
  11. fail-deadly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fail upward (page history and authors); fail upwards (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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