to mess up
52
3.0
- phrasal verb
- /mɛs ʌp/
- Informal
:
desordenar
- I accidentally messed up my room when I got ready for the party.
- mess up hair
Yeah, I don't want to mess your hair up right.
- Yeah, I don't want to mess your hair up right.
- I don't want to mess up my hair though.
- It has a brush on the opposite end and this is the perfect contour that you cannot mess up for your lips.
- It's you can really mess up your makeup by the powder, but this one looks really good.
- But one of them grew up in a stifling house where nothing could be amiss, and that person wants creative space to to mess things up and to be creative.
Examples
-
I am, what is a good word, distressed by the way that we are messing up our planet.
-
I also like to mess up my hair a lot, so I'm going to mess up the top part just so it looks bigger.
-
There are some folks around who like to mess up your plans.
Fiction book (1990) -
Maybe W will become your president and mess things up just like before.
Blog text (24) -
The new people are messing everything up.
-
We messed up the line.
-
We don't wanna mess the place up.
-
Where the sea urchins were, something else is taking over, messing up the water.
Fiction book (1995) -
But one of them grew up in a stifling house where nothing could be amiss, and that person wants creative space to to mess things up and to be creative.
-
It has a brush on the opposite end and this is the perfect contour that you cannot mess up for your lips.
Synonyms
641
6.3
To make a mistake that ruins what you are doing
248
1.0
To make something untidy or dirty
203
9.9
To make a serious mistake that ruins something
65
2.7
To make people confused and things messy
38
1.9
Mix things up so their order is not clear
37
9.9
To do something badly and ruin how it turns out
22
3.8
Mix things together in a confused way
8
6.4
To make a mistake that ruins something because you are careless
7
4.2
To fill a space with too many things so it looks messy
7
5.5
To make something untidy or not in its usual order
7
4.2
Disturb a smooth surface so small waves appear
6
7.9
To make hair, clothes, or a surface messy
6
5.4
To make clothes or hair wrinkled and messy
5
7.6
To ruin something by making mistakes or doing it badly
4
4.5
To make something lose its order or structure
4
8.1
To make a mess of a plan or task by doing it badly
2
5.4
To make a mistake especially by forgetting words on stage
2
8.1
To make someone's hair or clothes look untidy
2
6.7
Do a job badly and make a mess of it
1
2.1
Make a place messy so things are not in order
1
9.9
To cause a lot of damage and chaos to a place or thing
1
7.9
To do something badly and ruin how it turns out
1
5.6
To make things untidy or cause confusion
1
4.2
To make a smooth surface uneven or wrinkled
1
9.9
To do something so badly that it fails
1
9.9
To ruin something by making a mistake or being careless
To do something badly so it goes wrong
To ruin something by a careless mistake
To ruin something completely by making serious mistakes
Antonyms
How Messy
Surface Forms
Morphology
mess + up
The meaning 'to spoil, damage, or ruin' follows directly from combining 'mess' (to make dirty, untidy, or disordered) with the particle 'up', which here adds a sense of completion/intensification; together they yield 'make a mess of' or 'ruin'. This verb+particle composition is a common, fairly literal pattern in English (and parallels exist in many languages), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
Mess up comes from the picture of turning something neat into a 'mess'. If you spill food or scatter papers you make a mess, and adding up shows the action is done, so it came to mean 'to make untidy'.