balls up

balls up

See also: balls-up

English

Etymology 1

From ball up.

Verb

balls up

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of ball up

Etymology 2

From balls + up.

Verb

balls up (third-person singular simple present ballses up, present participle ballsing up, simple past and past participle ballsed up) (phrasal verb)

1. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, vulgar, intransitive) To make a mess of a situtation.
   • 2009, Jan Kjaerstad, The Discoverer, →ISBN:

     He was putting everything he had into it, but he kept ballsing up.

   • 2011, Lesley Thomson, A Kind of Vanishing, →ISBN:

     'We just have to get through without ballsing up

2. (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, vulgar, transitive) To do something badly. To ruin a job.
   • 1977, Mungo MacCallum, Mungo's Canberra, page 142:

     It has got to the ludicrous stage that whenever Snedden makes a speech without actually ballsing something up irrevocably, they tell him he's the greatest thing since Winston Churchill;

   • 2010, A.L. Kennedy, Everything You Need, →ISBN:

     Bearing in mind that if you're teasing but you have to explain it, then you're not teasing, you're just ballsing things up and being a fucking thug.

   He really ballsed up that paint work. It'll have to be redone!