mix up — cause confusion
phrasal verbC1IELTS 7+neutraloccasional
To make a situation, issue, or discussion more confusing or complicated, often unintentionally.
Say it like a native
Textbook His questions served only to complicate the discussion further.
Native His questions just mixed everything up.
'Mix up' compactly means throw into confusion; the formal version is heavy.
Pattern: mix up + object (abstract: issue, situation, debate, argument)
In use
- Bringing up unrelated topics will only mix up the discussion and make it harder to reach a conclusion.discourse
- Introducing conflicting data at this stage could mix up the debate and distract from the main point.IELTS speaking
Common mistake
✗ Don't mix up the things more.
✓ Don't mix things up even more.
It's separable — 'mix things up'; 'even more' reads more naturally than 'the things more'.
Common collocations
mix up + matters— everything, things, the issue, people
Don't confuse it
Unlike the B1 senses, which refer to confusing two things or physically combining them, this sense is abstract and evaluative, focusing on making a situation or issue more confusing overall.
Related
- mix up (confuse two things) — 'mix up' also has the more basic meaning 'confuse two things'; this is the advanced sense.