mess-up
noun
a blunder; state of confusion; mix-up.
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e-s-u-.
mess-up
American
[mes-uhp]
/ ˈmɛsˌʌp /
noun
-
mess-ups
plural
mess up
Idioms
-
Create disorder in; muddle or ruin. For example, On rainy days the children really mess up the house , or He had a way of messing up his own business . [c. 1900]
-
Make a mistake, especially from nervousness or confusion, as in He messed up and took the wrong dossier to the meeting , or Jill swore she would never mess up again . [ Colloquial ; early 1900s]
-
Beat up, manhandle, as in Joe got messed up in a barroom brawl . [ Slang ; early 1900s]
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mess-up
First recorded in 1900–05; noun use of verb phrase mess up
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"What Alan Garten did here is a pretty significant mess-up and again, as you just appropriately stated, it corroborates everything that I said."
From Salon ● Jul. 3, 2023
His wife Margaret said it was a "total mess-up" and said they felt "sick and very, very angry".
From BBC ● Jun. 5, 2020
Nick Faldo has a pretty eye-opening mess-up right off the bat on the telecast.
From Golf Digest ● Apr. 10, 2020
But I’m hoping to be surprised this year — just not in the same way as last year’s mess-up.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 1, 2018
The man I knew chucked up his business and left his home and risked his life because everybody was doing it, because it seemed there was a real mess-up, because one had to.
From Nonsenseorship by G. G. Putnam
But that can happen any place on any day, and nobody has to mess up an arid ecosystem to enjoy it.
From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2026
"I've been in a daze ever since I saw the announcement. Until more information comes out, I need to be careful not to mess up my daily life from overthinking," wrote X user Yachi.
From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 2026
“I like to have my little secret area where I can mess up as many times as I want without any eyes on me.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026
"A classic example is around diet or exercise and people think that if they mess up one day then the whole thing is pointless," she tells BBC's What's Up Doc podcast.
From BBC ● Dec. 26, 2025
“Kilgo can plain mess up a man’s head of hair,” Cleve agreed.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
Given the current state of AI and agents’ high-profile mess-ups, Palantir’s slop focus isn’t ungrounded in facts.
From Barron's ● May 6, 2026
The new update still produced some single-word mess-ups, while the older software had more gibberish phrases.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 29, 2026
In this scheme, individual mess-ups can become full-system failures.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2021
“So the mess-ups we’ve seen this past week,” he added, “I think we’re going to see over and over and over again.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 7, 2018
Five pages of anger and mess-ups and erasures.
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
