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

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

Even when Nasserzadeh would mess up as a kid, her mother would listen calmly to the situation and simply try to remind her to avoid the mistake next time. —Gili Malinsky, CNBC, 16 Sep. 2025

The Penguins can’t afford to mess up this rebuild. —Josh Yohe, New York Times, 11 Sep. 2025

Rhymes for mess up

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