411 REFERENCE · Wiktionary
Charlie Foxtrot
Reference material by Wiktionary contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
English
Etymology
From en clusterfuck, abbreviated as en CF and expressed in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Noun
en military slang clusterfuck.
en CF<q:abbreviation>
en That commission's project has become a huge Charlie Foxtrot; who's in charge over there?
en Bungie Bungie w:Halo 3 w:Microsoft Game Studios 25 September 2007 w:Xbox 360 Hocus Debra Wilson Debra Wilson Skelton The Covenant Charlie Foxtrot! Tower One approach has active Triple-A!
w:Michiko Kakutani How Abu Ghraib Became the Anything-Goes Prison 2008-05-14 https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/books/14kaku.html he quotes Tim Dugan, a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib, as saying: “It was Charlie Foxtrot without a doubt without a doubt. I’ve never seen anything like that, and I never thought that I would see American soldiers so depressed, and morale so low.” https://web.archive.org/web/20250827013607/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/books/14kaku.html 27 August 2025
Related terms
en clusterfuck