Word.ws English Dictionary

tits up

tits up adjective: broken; failed; inoperable. Also the third-person singular simple present indicative of tit up.

Adjective

tits up (not comparable)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, idiomatic, slang, vulgar) Broken; failed; inoperable.
    • The vast majority go tits up in the first year. Basic economics, even if the people have some training and education in retail.1987, Nora Roberts, Daring to dream, page 157
    • But believe me, sunshine, if this show goes tits up, none of us are going to come out smelling of roses."2007, Gemma Townley, The Hopeless Romantic's Handbook, page 102
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, idiomatic, slang, vulgar) Dead.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tits, up.

Also used as

tits up is also the third-person singular simple present indicative of tit up.

Forms of tits up

alternative formtits-up
alternative formtitsup

Origin of tits up

Perhaps derives from an expired animal lying on its back, or the behaviour of aeroplanes' attitude indicators, which in some regional conventions turn upside down when faulty and display an inverted 'W' resembling a pair of breasts.

Questions about tits up

What does tits up mean?
Tits up means broken; failed; inoperable.
What part of speech is tits up?
Tits up is an adjective.

Words near tits up in the dictionary

  1. Tits building
  2. Tits buildings
  3. Tits group
  4. tits or gtfo
  5. tits out for the lads
  6. tits up
  7. tits-up
  8. tits.
  9. titsucker
  10. titsuckers
  11. titsup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tits up (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-tits up.ogg.

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