balls-up

1. 1.

   something badly botched or muddled

   Synonymsballupcockupmess-up

   Broadermistake

   United Kingdom

Questions about balls-up

What does balls-up mean?

balls-up means "something badly botched or muddled".

How many syllables are in balls-up?

balls-up has 2 syllables: ball-s-up. The stress falls on "ball".

What is another word for balls-up?

Close synonyms include ballup, cockup, mess-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 balls-up a common word?

balls-up is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.