cock up
verbEtymology
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 below) seem unlikely. The term is sometimes attributed to the days of manual typesetting, when a letter that had become wedged slightly higher than the other letters on the line was said to be “cocked up”. Another claim relates to medieval archery. One of the three feathers on an arrow is a cock’s feather. If the arrow was incorrectly placed on the bow for drawing and release, the arrow would go off course because of the cock’s feather being up and therefore the arrow positioned wrongly on the bow. This was then known as a “cock up”.
- derived from Dictionary is from the Dictionary of Forces’ Slang
Definitions
To ruin (something) unintentionally
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.
- 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. . . .
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for cock up. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA