Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) to ruin, to botch.

1909		Magnet 10 July 3: The excursion’s messed-up anyway.
1923		‘Sapper’ Jim Maitland (1953) 185: You don’t mean to say they’ve gone and messed it up?
1927		E.C.L. Adams Congaree Sketches 12: God ain guh have a passel of niggers messen up he business.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 53: You didn’t have to take the finest music [...] in America and mess it up because you were a white man.
1953		‘William Lee’ Junkie (1966) 113: They had messed up the deal by coming on like Federals and by searching the house without a warrant.
1966		T. Keyes All Night Stand 54: I’m messing up his chat.
1970		E. Tidyman Shaft 51: I can trip over him or have him mess up my play.
1977		A. Hoffman Property Of (1978) 207: Don’t mess up McKay’s plans.
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 283: If he messes up my face, I’ll kill him on the spot.
1994		J. Wambaugh Finnegan’s Week 287: I tol’ joo, Buey. Speed mess up the brains!
1999		T. Dorsey Florida Roadkill 82: I’m selling an impression here [...] And I don’t need any photographic evidence to mess it up.
2001		N. Barlay Hooky Gear 288: You think some squeegee refugees gonna mess up my big stroke?

2. (US) to make a mistake, to get into trouble, to fail.

1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 29/2: MESS UP. Get into a scrape.
1947		J.W. Arnold ‘The Language of Delinquent Boys’ in AS XXII:2 Apr. 122: Mess up. (1) To get into trouble.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 83: He’s only out of recruit drill a month, and he messes up and catches all the extra details, but he’s a good boy.
1961		R. Gover One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 35: Naecher done mess me up at the most baddest time.
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 119: When one of johnny’s girls messed up on him [...] he sure was hard on them.
1976		D. Hall Dock Ellis 89: Last year, when they messed up behind me, I come back and got that man out.
1988		W.D. Myers Scorpions 56: If Randy got out again, he was just going to do some more messing up.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 37: I wanted to tell him how bad he’d messed up.
2000		Observer Screen 6 Feb. 2: He had to suffer the social stigma of having messed up in front of 33 million people.

3. (orig. US) to beat up, to assault, to disfigure.

1912		J. London Smoke Bellew Pt 9 🌐 Come on! Out of that an’ into them duds of yourn, double quick, or I’ll sure muss up the front of your face.
1927		(con. WW1) D.W. King L.M. 8046 82: A contact shell hit the lead team of one gun and ‘messed ’em up considerable’.
1936		T. ‘O’Reilly Tiger of the Legion 168: If that infernal swine of a corporal was on duty, I was going to mess his face up for him.
1944		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 1 Jan. 12: Those shot in the leg or arm [...] or ‘messed up’.
1953		W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 239: He wouldn’t even let his partner mess up Pepe.
1959		D. Niland Big Smoke 151: I messed him up good.
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 276: I knew he would have messed up that cat if he could have held on to that knife.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 29: I couldn’t ask two or three amigos to break into Rocky’s block and help me mess up his boys.
1971		R.T. Sale Blackstone Rangers 126: ‘Sister, what you gonna do? Sell your body? Make twenty dollars, but maybe get syphilis or VD or run into some freak who’ll mess you all up?’.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 246: mess up (one) [...] 2. Physically assault. 3. Beat severely.
1988		W.D. Myers Scorpions 121: ‘If they both jump on me I’m going to mess them up’.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 35: Everyone wanted to earn a rep for being able to [...] mess somebody up.
2002		D.H. Sterry Chicken (2003) 23: If you try to ... you know ... I’m gonna have to ... mess you up ... good.
2010		L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] I’m going to mess him up you won’t believe. Death, torture, they’re too good for that fucker.
2019		D. Winslow Border [ebook] ‘ABK [...] don’t care if you’re black or blue or red as long as you’re Spanish, they’ll mess you up’.

4. to ridicule.

1980

E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 246: mess up (one) 1. Disparage or ridicule.

5. (US black) to impregnate.

1941

Warner, Junker & al. Color & Human Nature 121: I don’t fool around with bright people ’cause my sister let a bright boy mess her up down South. A friend of ours sent her girl up here and one of these nice looking bright boys fooled her up too’.

6. to involve in.

1939		R. Chandler Big Sleep 161: If he ever messed Mona up in any criminal rap, he’d be around to see him.
1959		E. De Roo Young Wolves 56: ‘I’m going to—’ ‘What? Tell. I’ll mess you up, too.’.

7. to confuse, to make an emotional mess of.

1952		W.R. Burnett Little Men, Big World 15: You come messing me up wid your sweet talking.
1967		in S. Harris Hellhole 219: I can’t see taking a girl and messing her up, because when you first come into gay life you’re so confused.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 13: Thousands of high-loving heads out there messing up the minds of the cops.
1977		E. Torres Q&A 45: ‘Reilly is a good kid. If you mess him up, you’re gonna blow your credit with me’.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 87: Messing up their mind — or, as one teenager puts it, ‘To righteously fuck with d’ person mind-wise, fightin’-wise, all ways.’.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 103: ‘When he knew he wasn’t [going to win] he didn’t even bother to play.’ ‘So how’s that mess you up?’.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 153: Those fancy triple-bocks he’d tried down at the Brew House had really messed up his head.
2023		J. Jackson Pineapple Street 213: ‘I took a pill and it messed me up with the wine’.

8. (US) to play around, usu. in a sexual manner.

1959		Mad mag. Apr. 14: I don’’t like to see cheap hoods messing up sweet kids like you.
1962		R. Hauser Homosexual Society 38: In this way I’m more interesting than the men they usually go with who mess them up on the way home.
1970		A. Young Snakes (1971) 17: We used to mess up a lot together [...] We’d skip school and do a lot of crazy things.