foul up
/faʊl ˈʌp/
"foul-up" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“foul up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To make a mistake, to go wrong.
Corpus desk
Index EN-foul-up · foul up · English
foul up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | foul up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /faʊl ˈʌp/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “foul up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
foul up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed /faʊl ˈʌp/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
foul up doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is foul up, spelled F-O-U-L- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To make a mistake, to go wrong.
- 2To botch; to make a mess of.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how foul up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
You really fouled up this time.
I fouled up question 3 of the exam.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.