Query: Why "up" in "mess up", foul up", etc.?

[Laurence Horn]

>    I've been asked today why we say "mess up," "foul up," screw up,"
>etc.  Specifically, why "up" here?  Why not "down"?
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
"up" in such cases is wearing its completive cap; no directionality
(or good=up/bad=down metaphorical quality) is directly involved.  I
seem to recall some discussion of completive "up" in the literature,
but don't have the references on hand, other than this dissertation:

Lindner, Sue (1981)  A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of English
Verb-Particle Constructions with OUT and UP.  U. of California, San
Diego dissertation.

One nice example I recall is "drink up" (completive) vs. "drink down"
(directional/causative), both amounting to basically the same thing.

As for the verb-particle cases above, I'm not sure why one would
expect "mess down", "foul down", etc.--are there other examples to
which these would be analogous?

LH

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