muck 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 upball upspoilbunglefluffbollix

   Broaderfail
2. 2.

   soil with mud, muck, or mire

   “The child mucked up his shirt while playing ball in the garden”

   Synonymsmiremuckmud

   Broaderdirty

Questions about muck up

What does muck up mean?

muck up means "make a mess of, destroy or ruin". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for muck 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 muck up a common word?

muck 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.