student asking question

What's "mess up" mean and when's it used?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

To "mess up" means to make a mistake, to mishandle a situation, to make a poor choice that causes problems later. Here, "how bad you messed up" refers to the singer's ex making poor decisions when handling certain situations. Ex: I messed up on my exam, so I failed. Ex: I messed up big time. I lied to John and he found out.

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