Word.ws English Dictionary

stuff up

stuff up verb: to ruin or harm.

Verb

stuff up (third-person singular simple present stuffs up, present participle stuffing up, simple past and past participle stuffed up)

  1. (slang, transitive) To ruin or harm.
    • Don't drink tonight, because it'll stuff you up before your business trip.
  2. (Australia, UK, intransitive, slang) To make a big mistake.
    • We lost the match because of the goalkeeper stuffing up.
  3. (transitive) To cause (the nasal passages) to be blocked.
    • My nose is all stuffed up so I'm speaking funny.

Forms of stuff up

third-person singular presentstuffs up
present participlestuffing up
past participlestuffed up
paststuffed up

Questions about stuff up

What does stuff up mean?
Stuff up means to ruin or harm.
What part of speech is stuff up?
Stuff up is a verb.
What is the past tense of stuff up?
The past tense of stuff up is stuffed up.

Words near stuff up in the dictionary

  1. stuff one's face
  2. stuff out
  3. stuff sack
  4. stuff sacks
  5. stuff the ballot box
  6. stuff up
  7. stuff you
  8. stuff-a-roni
  9. stuff-up
  10. stuff-ups
  11. stuffable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stuff 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-stuff up.ogg.

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