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

And so the worry is that the AI can stick to the story very effectively and never mess up. —Tatiana Siegel, Variety, 3 Oct. 2025

There's a reason the host was messing up player names. —Dalton Ross, Entertainment Weekly, 2 Oct. 2025

There isn’t a real flag on the play until Isaiah brings in a practice squad to run drills with Cameron, a scene that ends with one of the new guys volunteering to get hit in the face with a perfect spiral from a football throwing machine every time the prospect messes up. —David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 18 Sep. 2025

Even as his team keeps messing up, botching substitutions and committing untimely errors, Mike McDaniel generally keeps his calm. —Barry Jackson, Miami Herald, 17 Sep. 2025

Rhymes for mess up

• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup
• markup