clusterfuck

Etymology

From cluster + fuck. Reportedly coined in the 1960s by Hippie poet Ed Sanders as Mongolian Cluster Fuck.

noun

1. (slang, vulgar) A chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong, often caused by communication failure, a complex environment, or incompetence.
   [Colonel Meyers:] That's for sure. What's your assessment of this exercise? [Highway:] It's a cluster fuck. 1986, Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge, IMDB tt0091187
   1989: P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell "Mongolian Cluster Fuck" is the technical term journalists use for a preplanned, wholly scripted, news-free event.
   They had a name for something like this in the army—a cluster fuck. Yes. Good name. ... He was sitting here in the middle of a great big cluster fuck 1990, Stephen King, Dark Half, page 151
   A simple sweep-and-clear turned into a total clusterfuck: T-Bird, trying to explain to Eric how the situation escalated on Devil's Night […] 1994, James O'Barr, Alex Proyas, The Crow
   Please note also my request that henceforth I wish to be reminded of the possibility of a clusterfuck in any contingency plan or operations proposal […] 1995, John Barnes, Mother of Storms
   My cousin was in the Army over here in '68. He says don't trust anybody to know what they're doing, calls it a cluster-fuck. Fucked-up-beyond-all-repair, FUBAR he says. 2004, Ray Kopp, Thunder in the Night: A Sailor's Perspective on Vietnam, page 87
   […] and you will still only begin to get a sense of the constitutionally mandated clusterfuck that is the modern presidency. 2004, Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide To Democracy Inaction
   It was a clusterfuck, a deadly clusterfuck. When the doughs finally got off the ground in some numbers and charged into the woods, the Krauts broke contact […] 2005, Charles W. Sasser, Patton's Panthers: The African-American 761st Tank Battalion in World War II
   [CIA-Superior:] Okay. Okay. If he wakes up we'll worry about it then. Jesus, what a clusterfuck. 2008, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Burn After Reading, IMDB tt0887883
   2013: Barbara Kruger: What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement in response to the Supreme v Married To The Mob battle

verb

1. (vulgar) To fuck (something) up, to make a total mess of.