fail upwards | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic,informal)Toadvancein one'scareerdespitefailureorincompetence.Synonym:fail up the ladder1994, 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,page139: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.1997, Robert A. Berman,Fade in: The Screenwriting Process, M. Wiese Productions,→ISBN,page216:In Hollywood, as in many industries, there are countless tales of people whofail upwards. It means that no matter how poorly someone performs with one project, the next one he or she will be given will be significantly greater. If a director makes a flop for $15 million, you can bet the ranch that his next picture deal will be for $25 million.2008, William Goldman,Magic: A Novel, Random House Publishing Group,→ISBN,page107:He was your standard show business example offailing upwards, and the Postman had no doubts that eventually Goldstone would be running a major Hollywood film studio into receivership.2010, Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas S. Blanton, Vladislav Martinovich Zubok,Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Central European University Press,→ISBN,page261:Gates himself would move to the White House as deputy national security adviser—in effect,failing upwards.

Examples:

EN: When do I get to fail upwards?
ES: ¿Cúando se llegó a fracasar arriba?
EN: What can I tell you, in Hollywood, people fail upwards.
ES: ¿Qué puedo decirte? En Hollywood, al fracasado le va bien.
EN: How some people can fail upwards.
ES: Cómo algunas personas pueden fallar hacia arriba.
EN: Men fail upwards all the time.
ES: Los hombres caen siempre bien parados.
ID: Pria selalu begitu, meski gagal.
EN: Please. He's just an entitled dumbass who uses his nice smile and male privilege to fail upwards and become king of the Everests.
ID: Dia hanyalah orang bodoh yang memanfaatkan senyum manis dan hak laki-laki untuk sukses dan menjadi raja para Everest.
EN: Why, yes. I am available to fail upwards.
ID: Ya, aku bisa gagal ke atas.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).