balls up
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See also: balls-up
English[edit]
Etymology 1[edit]
From ball up.
Verb[edit]
- third-person singular simple present indicative of ball up
Etymology 2[edit]
From balls + up; see also balls-up.
Verb[edit]
balls up (third-person singular simple present ballses up, present participle ballsing up, simple past and past participle ballsed up)
- (British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, vulgar, intransitive) To make a mess of a situtation.
- (British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, vulgar, transitive) To do something badly. To ruin a job.
- He really ballsed up that paint work. It'll have to be redone!
- 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.
- 2023 January 28, Justin Myers, “62 dating green flags that shout ‘this one’s a keeper’”, in The Guardian[1]:
- We’re humans, we’re fallible, there is no medal for being right all the time; admitting we ballsed it up is not a weakness, it’s a superpower.
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