词汇 | make a mess of doing something |
释义 | (redirected from make a mess of doing something)make a mess (out) of (something)To handle something in a way that causes it to be disordered, damaged, or ruined. I had these books all in order but the kids rifled through them and made a mess of the whole thing. I'm afraid the accounting department made a mess out of these numbers. We'll need to re-tally the entire ledger. make a mess of somethingFig. to mess something up; to ruin something. Give it a try, but don't make a mess of it. Jerry made a mess of the kitchen. make a hash ofAlso, make a mess of. Ruin or spoil something, as in They've made a hash of their financial affairs, or She thought he'd make a mess of the garden. The first term, first recorded in 1833, uses hash in the sense of "a jumble of mangled fragments"; the variant, using mess in the sense of "a muddle" or "a state of confusion," was first recorded in 1862. make a hash of somethingINFORMALIf you make a hash of a job or task, you do it very badly. The Government made a total hash of things and wasted a small fortune. She fumbled with the trolley and made a hash of stacking the food trays. make a hash ofmake a mess of; bungle. informalHash comes from the French verb hacher meaning ‘chop up small’. A hash is a dish of cooked meat cut into small pieces and recooked with gravy; from this comes the derogatory sense of hash meaning ‘a jumble of incongruous elements; a mess’. make a ˈmess/ˈhash of something/of doing something(informal) do something very badly: We tried making some wine, but we made a mess of it (= it did not taste good).I made a complete hash of the whole exam. |
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