ball up

1. 1.

   make a mess of, destroy or ruin

   “I botched the dinner and we had to eat out”

   “the pianist screwed up the difficult passage in the second movement”

   Synonymsbotchbodgebumblefumblebotch upmuffblowflubscrew upspoilmuck upbunglefluffbollix

   Broaderfail

Questions about ball up

What does ball up mean?

ball up means "make a mess of, destroy or ruin".

What is another word for ball up?

Close synonyms include botch, bodge, bumble, fumble, botch up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ball up a common word?

ball up is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.