Word.ws English Dictionary

lousing up

lousing up is the present participle and gerund of louse up.

Meaning of louse up

Verb

louse up (third-person singular simple present louses up, present participle lousing up, simple past and past participle loused up)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To mess up; to confuse; to put into a state of disorder.
    • To be loused up by Humbolt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso, or an eviscerated chicken by Soutine.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 3
  2. (US, informal) To mistreat (someone).

Questions about lousing up

What is lousing up the present participle and gerund of?
Lousing up is the present participle and gerund of louse up.

Words near lousing up in the dictionary

  1. Lousigam
  2. lousily
  3. lousiness
  4. lousing
  5. lousing around
  6. lousing up
  7. lousings
  8. louster
  9. loustered
  10. loustering
  11. lousters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lousing up (page history and authors); louse 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: “lousing up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lousing_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.