mess up

phrasal verb

messed up; messing up; messes up
informal
: to make a mistake : to do something incorrectly
About halfway into the recipe, I realized that I had messed up, and I had to start over.
often + on
She's afraid she'll mess up on the test.
I messed up on my first attempt.

Examples of mess up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Eric knows that his son feels immense academic and athletic pressure to obtain a higher education and not mess up the head start his family has worked so hard to provide him. Angelique Jackson, Variety, 7 Mar. 2024 Experts say the loss of those experienced workers could cause problems like having ballots printed on paper that's too short, or pens that bleed through the ballots and potentially mess up computerized counts, which could slow results. Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY, 25 Feb. 2024 A lot of people mess up, which can be very aggravating. Shari Rudavsky, The Indianapolis Star, 29 Jan. 2024 In the film, the Enough actor plays a woman, referred to as the Artist, who keeps messing up in her relationships because she’s forgotten to love herself! Ilana Kaplan, Peoplemag, 29 Feb. 2024 This is arguably a harder approach to mess up, since the human brain loves symmetry (more on that below). Stacey Colino, Washington Post, 28 Feb. 2024 The wiring had been messed up and my lights had stopped working. Kunle Falayi, The Arizona Republic, 28 Feb. 2024 After walks by Ben McLaughlin and Sprague-Lott, Diggs scored after the Tigers messed up a potential double-play grounder when second baseman Kyle Walker dropped a relay at the bag. Tom Murphy, arkansasonline.com, 28 Feb. 2024 The result seems scrambled because the dictionary is messed up. Lance Eliot, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mess up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Dictionary Entries Near mess up

Cite this Entry

“Mess up.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mess%20up. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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