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mess - definition and meaning
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cluttered, untidy, usually dirty place or condition.
- noun Something that is disorderly or dirty, as a accumulation or heap.
- noun A confused, troubling, or embarrassing condition or situation.
- noun One that is in such a condition.
- noun An amount of food, as for a meal, course, or dish.
- noun A serving of soft, semiliquid food.
- noun A group of people, usually soldiers or sailors, who regularly eat meals together.
- noun Food or a meal served to such a group.
- noun A mess hall.
- intransitive verb To make disorderly or dirty.
- intransitive verb To cause or make a mess.
- intransitive verb To intrude; interfere.
- intransitive verb To take a meal in a military mess.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A disorderly mixture or jumble of things; a state of dirt and disorder: as, the house was in a mess.
- noun A situation of confusion, disorder, or embarrassment; a muddle: as, to get one's self into a mess.
- noun An obsolete form of
mace . - To share a mess; eat in company with others or as a member of a mess; take a meal with any other person: as, I will mess with you to-day.
- To supply with a mess: as, to
mess cattle. - To sort in messes for the table, as meat.
- To make a mess of; disorder, soil, or dirty.
- To muddle; throw into confusion: as, he messes the whole business.
- noun An obsolete form of
mass - noun A supply or provision of anything to be eaten at one meal; a quantity of food sufficient for one or more persons for a single occasion: as, a mess of peas for dinner; a mess of oats for a horse.
- noun In fishing, the amount or number of fish taken; the take or haul of fish.
- noun A number of persons who eat together at the same table; especially, a group of officers or men in the army or navy who regularly take their meals in company.
- noun A set of four; any group of four persons or things: originally as a convenient subdivision of a numerous company at dinner, a practice still maintained in the London inns of court.
- Mass. See
by the mass , under mass.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A quantity of food set on a table at one time; provision of food for a person or party for one meal; ; also, the food given to a beast at one time.
- noun A number of persons who eat together, and for whom food is prepared in common; especially, persons in the military or naval service who eat at the same table.
- noun obsolete A set of four; -- from the old practice of dividing companies into sets of four at dinner.
- noun U.S. The milk given by a cow at one milking.
- noun colloq. A disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; hence, a situation resulting from blundering or from misunderstanding.
- intransitive verb To take meals with a mess; to belong to a mess; to eat (with others).
- noun obsolete Mass; church service.
- transitive verb To supply with a mess.
- transitive verb To make a mess{5} of; to disorder or muddle; to muss; to jumble; to disturb; to mess up.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English mes, course of a meal, food, group of people eating together, from Old French, from Late Latin missus, from Latin, past participle of mittere, to place.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Perhaps a corruption of Middle English mesh ("for mash"), compare muss.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Middle English mes, Old French mets, Late Latin missum,, from mittere ("to put, place") (e.g. on the table), Latin mittere ("to send"). See mission, and compare Mass ("religious service").
Support
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Examples
-
By this time our daily mess of food had become a _mess_ in every sense.
Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly Various
-
At the heart of the mess is the work of "robo-signers," people who signed thousands of documents without proper review.
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To think low level traders created this mess is the same as thinking low level intelligence analysts in CIA — with Dick Cheney breathing down their neck — were the ones who created the false narrative leading to the invasion of Iraq.
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The fact that the court documents are a mess is a problem, but it will not usually be sufficient to win a foreclosure fight.
Foreclosure crisis a 'cancer': Christopher Whalen on impact on banks, housing market, economy Christopher Whalen 2010
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Add an extra buck or two on top of that if the kids were noisy or the mess is a little worse than usual.
-
Wake up republicans, this mess is your fault, not President Obama.
-
And cleaning up his mess is a tough duty that I think nobody could instantly fix. 7 months in his admin. and we've seen so drastic changes.
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But the mess is a daily reminder of the tribulations Bank of America inherited when it bought Countrywide.
BofA Tries to Untangle Files Ruth Simon 2010
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Take the ball and run with it this mess is all yours! annie s
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Cleaning up the mess is a huge challenge for the Charlotte, N.C., bank, a modest player in the mortgage-servicing industry before the 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp.
BofA Tries to Untangle Files Ruth Simon 2010
Related Words
synonyms (448)
Words with the same meaning
- C ration
- Chinese puzzle
- Gordian knot
- K ration
- Rube Goldberg contraption
- all sorts
- allotment
- allowance
- amount
- arsy-varsiness
- assemblage
- assortment
- baboon
- bad job
- bag
- batch
- befoul
- befuddlement
- benasty
- bevue
- bewilderment
- big end
- bigger half
- bind
- bit
- bitch up
- bite
- blemish
- blot
- blow
- blunder
- board
- bobble
- boggle
- bollix
- bonehead play
- boner
- boo-boo
- botch
- botchery
- bother
- botheration
- bread
- broad spectrum
- budget
- bunch
- bungle
- butt in
- cafeteria
- can of worms
- carrion
- chaos
- chunk
- cloud
- clump
- clumsy performance
- cluster
- clutch
- clutter
- commission
- commons
- complex
- complication
- concoction
- confuse
- confusion
- conglomeration
- considerable
- contaminate
- contingent
- copse
- corrupt
- corruption
- count
- crop
- crunch
- cut
- dabble
- dally
- dandruff
- daze
- deal
- decay
- defile
- derange
- destiny
- destroy
- difficulty
- dilemma
- dine
- dinette
- dining car
- dining hall
- dining room
- dining saloon
- dirty
- disarrange
- disarrangement
- disarray
- discombobulation
- discomfiture
- discomposure
- disconcertion
- dish
- dishevel
- dislocate
- disorder
- disorganization
- disorganize
- disorientation
- disturb
- disturbance
- dividend
- dog
- dole
- doodle
- dose
- eat
- embarrassing position
- embarrassment
- emergency rations
- end
- entertainment
- equal share
- error
- etourderie
- excrement
- eyesore
- farrago
- fate
- feed
- fiasco
- field rations
- filth
- fine how-do-you-do
- fix
- flirt
- flub
- fluff
- flummox
- flunk
- flurry
- fluster
- flutter
- fodder
- fog
- fool around
- foozle
- forage
- foul
- foul matter
- foul up
- foul-up
- frenzy
- fright
- fuddle
- fuddlement
- fumble
- furfur
- gallimaufry
- gangrene
- gargoyle
- gaucherie
- gob
- gobs
- good deal
- goof up
- grass
- gratify
- graze
- great deal
- group
- grouping
- groupment
- grove
- gum up
- hag
- half
- halver
- harridan
- hash
- hassock
- haze
- heap
- heaps
- hell to pay
- helping
- helter-skelter
- higgledy-piggledy
- hobble
- hodgepodge
- hot water
- hotchpot
- hotchpotch
- how-do-you-do
- hunk
- hysteron proteron
- imbroglio
- infect
- interest
- interfere with
- intervene
- jam
- jumble
- jungle
- kettle of fish
- knot
- labyrinth
- large amount
- lashings
- litter
- loads
- lot
- lots
- louse up
- lump
- magpie
- mash
- mass
- maze
- meal
- meals
- mealy
- meander
- measure
- meat
- meddle with
- medley
- meed
- melange
- mesh
- mess around
- mess hall
- mess up
- mess with
- messroom
- mingle-mangle
- mint
- misarrange
- miscellany
- miscue
- mishmash
- mist
- mistake
- mix
- mix-up
- mixed bag
- mixture
- modicum
- moiety
- monster
- monstrosity
- morass
- much
- muck
- muck up
- mucus
- muddle
- muddlement
- muff
- mull
- muss
- muss up
- nasty
- no beauty
- number
- obscenity
- odds and ends
- off day
- olio
- olla podrida
- omnium-gatherum
- oodles
- ordure
- pack
- parcel
- parlous straits
- part
- pass
- pasticcio
- pastiche
- pasture
- patchwork
- peck
- percentage
- perplex
- perplexity
- perturbation
- philander
- pickle
- piece
- pile
- piles
- pinch
- play
- plight
- pollute
- portion
- pot
- pother
- potpourri
- potter
- power
- predicament
- pretty pass
- pretty pickle
- pretty predicament
- proportion
- provision
- pucker
- puddle
- pull to pieces
- pus
- putrid matter
- putter
- quagmire
- quandary
- quantity
- quantum
- quicksand
- quite a little
- quota
- raft
- rafts
- rake-off
- ration
- rations
- ravel
- refection
- refectory
- refreshment
- regale
- regalement
- repas
- repast
- restaurant
- rot
- ruffle
- ruin
- rumple
- run around
- sad work
- salad
- salle a manger
- salmagundi
- satisfy
- sauce
- scads
- scarecrow
- scatter
- scramble
- scrape
- screw up
- screw-up
- scurf
- scuz
- seduce
- segment
- shambles
- share
- shock
- short commons
- shuffle
- sight
- sleep around
- slew
- slews
- slice
- slime
- slip
- slough
- small amount
- small share
- smorgasbord
- smut
- snafu
- snake pit
- snarl
- snot
- sordes
- spate
- spot
- spread
- squeeze
- stack
- stacks
- stake
- stew
- sticky wicket
- stock
- stook
- strait
- straits
- stumble
- sully
- sum
- sustain
- swamp
- sweat
- swivet
- table
- taint
- tamper with
- tangle
- tangled skein
- tarnish
- teratism
- thicket
- tidy sum
- tight spot
- tight squeeze
- tightrope
- tinker
- tizzy
- topsy-turviness
- topsy-turvydom
- tousle
- toy
- treat
- tricky spot
- trifle
- trip
- trouble
- tucker
- tuft
- tumble
- turmoil
- turn upside down
- tussock
- ugly duckling
- unholy mess
- unsettlement
- untidiness
- upset
- wad
- wads
- washout
- webwork
- welter
- what you will
- wheels within wheels
- whole slew
- wilderness
- wine and dine
- wisp
- witch
- wreck
- wreckage
hypernyms (13)
Words that are more generic or abstract
same context (20)
Words that are found in similar contexts
forms (5)
Forms
cross-references (8)
Cross-references
rhymes (88)
Words with the same terminal sound
- Bess
- Es
- Etess
- Fs
- Hess
- Hesse
- Ins
- Jess
- Les
- Ness
- S
- S.
- Tess
- Wes
- abs
- acquiesce
- address
- aggress
- assess
- attests
- bless
- caress
- ches
- chess
- coalesce
- compress
- confess
- contests
- convalesce
- cress
- depress
- digests
- digress
- dispossess
- distress
- dress
- egress
- ers
- es
- ess
- excess
- express
- fess
- finesse
- fluoresce
- gess
- guess
- impress
- ins
- jess
- kess
- largesse
- las
- les
- less
- ness
- nevertheless
- noblesse
- nonetheless
- obsess
- oppress
- pos
- possess
- press
- profess
- progress
- protests
- reassess
- recess
- redress
- regress
- reinvests
- repossess
- repress
- requests
- s
- s.
- simplesse
- stress
- success
- suppress
- transgress
- tress
- undress
- unless
- us
- vs
- yes
uselessness commented on the word mess
We wish that all of you could stay seated during the entire performance.
May 25, 2007