Word.ws English Dictionary

failing upwards

failing upwards is the present 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 failing upwards

What is failing upwards the present participle of?
Failing upwards is the present participle of fail upwards.

Words near failing upwards in the dictionary

  1. failing safe
  2. failing that
  3. failing up
  4. failing up the ladder
  5. failing upward
  6. failing upwards
  7. failingly
  8. failingness
  9. failings
  10. Failipino
  11. Failla

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: failing 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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