ballocks (up) v.
to ruin, to make a mess of.
![]() | Debris (Purdue U.) 14 25: I was never any other way except all bollixed up on that E.M.F. formula. | |
![]() | I Can Get It For You Wholesale 36: You’re getting your cues all bollixed up. | |
![]() | Parm Me 181: My client’s business is gonna get all bollixed up. | |
![]() | New Yorker 17 Aug. 12/3: I bollixed the plot by deliberately playing the wrong number at the wrong time. | |
![]() | Modern Lang. Notes LXIV 4: No such feeling, however, attaches to ballocks up, A young woman of unimpeachable modesty shocked her elderly uncle [by] employing the phrase as learned from his own lips. | |
![]() | DAUL 31/2: Bollix. To bungle. | et al.|
![]() | Alcoholics (1993) 3: He would stand accused of failure, of bollixing a job. | |
![]() | Sweet Thursday (1955) 208: He got himself all bollixed up. | |
![]() | Mr Love and Justice (1964) 112: I hope your private investigations haven’t b---d up the situation prematurely. | |
![]() | Flesh Peddlers (1964) 134: Somehow everything seemed all bolixed up with my love life. | |
![]() | Doom Pussy 212: She’s bollixed it up good now. | |
![]() | Godfather 130: They got their assignments bollixed. | |
![]() | Billy Rags [ebook] All that had happened was that someone had ballocksed up the hook. | |
![]() | Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 3: For one wild moment I came near to bollixing it all by asking, ‘What six stens?’. | |
![]() | Auf Wiedersehen Pet Two 25: It doesn’t seem to cross your tiny mind that your being breathalysed totally bolluxed up my evening. [Ibid.] 266: If you mess around with her and bollix things up for the rest of us [...] I’ll give you more than a flash. | |
![]() | Yes We have No 201: His recent plans [have all been] bolloxed by the fuck-ups and rank amateurs he’s forced to work with. | |
![]() | Hurricane Punch 167: The story bollixed the results of an internal affairs case. | |
![]() | Gutted 71: I wouldn’t want you to bollocks your proper grown-up police procedures. | |
![]() | Widespread Panic 60: ‘I’m training for the ’56 Olympics and I don’t want to bolix that up’. | |
![]() | Secret Hours 50: [T]he respect of his peers for a job not bollixed. |
In phrases
1. to mess about, to play the fool.
![]() | Alcoholics (1993) 29: Bollixing around with that correspondence course crap. | |
![]() | DSUE (8th edn) 44/1: C.20. |
2. to infuriate, to waste someone’s time, to be indecisive.
![]() | DSUE (8th edn) 44/1: C.20. |