Word.ws English Dictionary

failed upwards

failed upwards is the simple past and past participle 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

Questions about failed upwards

What is failed upwards the simple past and past participle of?
Failed upwards is the simple past and past participle of fail upwards.

Words near failed upwards in the dictionary

  1. failed states
  2. failed supernova
  3. failed up
  4. failed up the ladder
  5. failed upward
  6. failed upwards
  7. failer
  8. failers
  9. failes
  10. failest
  11. faileth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: failed upwards (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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