Word.ws English Dictionary

balls up

balls up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of ball up.

Verb

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

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, intransitive, vulgar) To make a mess of a situation.
    • He was putting everything he had into it, but he kept ballsing up.2009, Jan Kjaerstad, The Discoverer, →ISBN
    • 'We just have to get through without ballsing up2011, Lesley Thomson, A Kind of Vanishing, →ISBN
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, transitive, vulgar) To do something badly. To ruin a job.
    • He really ballsed up that paint work. It'll have to be redone!
    • 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;1977, Mungo MacCallum, Mungo's Canberra, page 142

Meaning of ball up

Verb

ball up (third-person singular simple present balls up, present participle balling up, simple past and past participle balled up)

  1. (transitive) To crush or form into a ball shape.
    • She balled up her paper in frustration.
    1. (transitive) To form melted metals into balls or lumps to roll them out of a furnace for further use.
  2. (ambitransitive) To coil up into a ball.
    • He balled up his fists, ready to fight.
  3. (intransitive) To become ball-shaped.
    • Be careful, or the metal will ball up.
  4. (intransitive) To hunch over and pull in one's arms and legs.
    • Her son balls up in fear whenever there is a storm.
  5. (slang, transitive) To ruin or botch.
    • The best man balled up his speech, stammering and tripping over his words.

See all 12 meanings of ball up

Forms of balls up

third-person singular presentballses up
present participleballsing up
past participleballsed up
pastballsed up

Origin of balls up

From ball up.

From balls + up; see also balls-up.

Questions about balls up

What does balls up mean?
Balls up means to make a mess of a situation.
What is balls up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Balls up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of ball up.
What part of speech is balls up?
Balls up is a verb.
What is the past tense of balls up?
The past tense of balls up is ballsed up.

Words near balls up in the dictionary

  1. balls off
  2. balls on
  3. balls out
  4. balls to the wall
  5. balls to the walls
  6. balls up
  7. balls-deep
  8. balls-out
  9. balls-to-the-wall
  10. balls-to-the-walls
  11. balls-up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balls up (page history and authors); ball up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “balls up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/balls_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.