mess Hear it!

mess Definition

mess (mes)

noun

  1. a portion or quantity of food for a meal or dish
  2. a portion of soft or semiliquid food, as porridge
  3. unappetizing food; disagreeable concoction
    1. a group of people who regularly have their meals together, as in the army
    2. the meal eaten by such a group
    3. the place where it is eaten
  5. a disorderly or confused collection or mass of things; jumble; hodgepodge
    1. a state of embarrassment, trouble, difficulty, or confusion; muddle
    2. a state of being disorderly, untidy, or dirty
    3. ☆ Informal a person in either of these states
  7. Informal a messy or disorderly place or condition the house is a mess!

Etymology: ME messe < OFr mes < L missus, a course (at a meal), orig. pp. of mittere, to send, put: see mission

transitive verb

  1. to supply meals to
  2. to make a mess of; specif., to make dirty, soiled, or untidy; also, to bungle; muddle; botch: often with up

intransitive verb

  1. to eat as one of a mess (sense )
  2. to make a mess
  3. to putter (with)
  4. to meddle (in or with)

mess Idioms

mess around

or mess about☆
  1. to be busy in a desultory way; putter around
  2. Informal to become involved (with)
mess Synonyms

mess

n.

  1. A mixture

    combination, compound, blend; see mash, mixture 1.

  2. A confusion

    jumble, mayhem, hodgepodge*; see confusion 2, disorder 2.

  3. Military term for meals

    rations, chow*, grub*; see meal 2.

mess Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • jumble: Sam only failed to find the back of the net due to a jumbled mess with a defender and the St Ives keeper.
  • untangle: Flickr is clever enough to untangle the mess of tags in it's database into clusters all by itself.
  • char: The physical X Files are a charred mess, and Mulder is trying to recreate the documents.
  • inherit: We will inherit a terrible mess on the London Underground.

Preposition: on

  • pavement: To avoid horse mess on the pavements or roads - exercise your horse in a suitable field prior to going on public highways.

Adjective modifier

  • unholy: Which is how I ended up with this unholy mess.
  • tangled: The cotton was cleaned and opened and then fed into the machine where the tangled mess was stretched and straightened.
  • sticky: Which is one of the reasons that we're in this sticky mess in the first place!
  • gooey: It was her usual effort of soggy chips and even soggier fish that had all sort of merged together into one horrible gooey mess.
  • soggy: Go look at wasps nest: now a sad soggy mess sans its outer cover: a few wasps cower: destroy remains.
  • horrible: The US and Britain made a horrible mess of Iraq.

Modifies a noun

  • tent: Any food left out in the mess tent would be dragged off or eaten on the spot.
  • tin: The army set up a mess in a tent where we took our mugs and mess tins with us for each meal.
  • deck: Scott himself observed that reading on the mess deck tended to be of a " desultory character " .
  • hall: I elect not to eat in the sweltering hot mess hall.

Noun used with modifier

  • dog: Then came a mention of dog mess & even a mention of our bus services.
  • postcode: Posted in General, Media coverage | 9 Comments » In today's Guardian: who will address the postcode mess?

Preposition: of

  • pottage: He sold his interest in the Lord for a mess of pottage.

Followed by an intransitive particle

  • around: I have seen them messing around, wiring them together.
  • up: We also have found the messing up of the weekend a bit of a pain.
mess Quotes

Madam, if you don't know by now, don't mess with it! SeeArmstrong 30:75.

—Waller, Fats (Thomas Wright)

And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Ithink thereareinnumerablegods.What we onearth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess.

—Burroughs,William S(eward)

Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into.

—Hardy, Oliver originally Norvell HardyJr

They were careless people,Tom and Daisyöthey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

—Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott Key

Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage.

—Bible (Old Testament)

If the war didn't happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn't go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid.You knew it was just a balls-up. 628

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

   Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)