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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. - noun An obsolete form of
mace .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- 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.
- intransitive verb To take meals with a mess; to belong to a mess; to eat (with others).
- 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.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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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
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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.
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Wake up republicans, this mess is your fault, not President Obama.
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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
uselessness commented on the word mess
We wish that all of you could stay seated during the entire performance.
May 25, 2007