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mess

[mes]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

a dirty, untidy, or disordered condition: The room was in a mess.

a person or thing that is dirty, untidy, or disordered.

a state of embarrassing confusion: My affairs are in a mess.

an unpleasant or difficult situation: She got into a mess driving without a license.

a dirty or untidy mass, litter, or jumble: a mess of papers.

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a group regularly taking their meals together.

the meal so taken.

mess hall.

Naval. messroom.

10.

a quantity of food sufficient for a dish or a single occasion: to pick a mess of sweet corn for dinner.

11.

a sloppy or unappetizing preparation of food.

12.

a dish or quantity of soft or liquid food: to cook up a nice mess of pottage.

13.

a person whose life or affairs are in a state of confusion, especially a person with a confused or disorganized moral or psychological outlook.

COLLAPSE

verb (used with object)

14.

to make dirty or untidy (often followed by up): Don't mess the room.

15.

to make a mess or muddle of (affairs, responsibilities, etc.) (often followed by up): They messed the deal.

16.

to supply with meals, as military personnel.

17.

to treat roughly; beat up (usually followed by up): The gang messed him up.

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Mess is one of our favorite verbs.

So is lollygag. Does it mean:

to spend time idly; loaf.

to chew (food) slowly and thoroughly.

LEARN MORE FUN, UNUSUAL VERBS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

verb (used without object)

18.

to eat in company, especially as a member of a mess.

19.

to make a dirty or untidy mess.

Verb phrases

20.

mess around

about,

Informal. to busy oneself without purpose or plan; work aimlessly or halfheartedly; putter.

Informal. to waste time; loaf.

Informal. to meddle or interfere.

Informal. to involve or associate oneself, especially for immoral or unethical purposes: His wife accused him of messing around with gamblers.

Slang. to trifle sexually; philander.

21.

mess in

with, to intervene officiously; meddle: You'll get no thanks for messing in the affairs of others.

22.

mess up,

to make dirty, untidy, or disordered.

to make muddled, confused, etc.; make a mess of; spoil; botch.

to perform poorly; bungle: She messed up on the final exam.

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English mes < Old French: a course at a meal < Late Latin missus what is sent (i.e., put on the table), noun use of past participle of Latin mittere to send

Synonyms
3. muddle, farrago, hodgepodge. 4. predicament, plight, muddle, pickle. 15. confuse, mix up.

Antonyms
1. tidiness. 3. order. 15. arrange.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To mess

Example Sentences

It is possible, but difficult, to clean up the paperwork mess affecting mortgages.

But no one has been able to do much about cleaning up the mess.

And finally, it must start the process of designing a new system to stop such a mess ever being created again.

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It is possible, but difficult, to clean up the paperwork mess affecting mortgages.

But no one has been able to do much about cleaning up the mess.

And finally, it must start the process of designing a new system to stop such a mess ever being created again.

Today the field has again become a rather glorious mess.

Cutting corners on this for a quick buck is likely to leave a mess around.

Mess with the pollination period and there will be no acorns in the fall.

Work over a bowl to catch the pits and juice, minimizing mess.

Apple this week revised the layout of its iPhone application store to make it less of a cluttered mess.

And some of us relished the potential productivity of that mess.

But it is also the root cause of the mess they are in now.

Most of the time, when humans mess with nature, they lose.

Signals that arrive in this way can mess with the original message, as the two versions of the signal collide.

They can't swim away and can become contaminated with oil and the dispersants used to clean up the mess.

Female plants produce cottony seed clusters that can make a mess when blown about by wind.

There's nothing worse than trying to untangle a mess of cables when you want to swap out a piece of equipment.

We might end up in a bigger mess than we're already in.

Generally dogs have the intinct to not mess in their bed area but what size that bed area is, is up.

Red-bellied piranhas make three distinctive sounds when communicating about how much they will mess each other up.

The whole mess toppled from the roof in a blaze of glory that set the pine needles in the yard on fire.

Last weekend, our family canoed to the oysters only to find our five bags in a jumbled mess.

But some more-mischievous developers have used tricks similar to the vuvuzela fanfare to mess with pirates.

Everyone expects that someone else in charge of this mess.

So we've proven that we're good at making a mess in space.

It can be a mess if you need to change the pot out and some roots have grown into the styrofoam.

All that swiping and tapping on your iPhone takes a heavy toll on the screen, leaving it a streaked and grimy mess.

Efforts to clean up the mess intensified over the weekend.

Yeah, regulation sucks, until you see the mess that develops due to lack of regulation.

Mess with military procurement bureaucrats at your own peril.

Günther dutifully set out to rig fixed lines, but the ropes were a tangled mess.

The receiver has to sort through this mess and figure out which signal to lock on to.

The result was today's financial mess which nobody but a fool could deny.

Evolution wouldn't mess up crumbs getting into your eyes.

Love bugs are harmless, although they do make a mess on your car--but that's what the car wash is for.

None of that excuses the mess it has made of its banking system.

Red-bellied piranhas make three distinctive sounds when communicating about how much they will mess each other.

Confronted with a hill full of gold, miners removed the hill and the gold and left a mess behind.

When a supernova's blast screams outward, it creates a mess of magnetism that this simulation attempts to recreate.

Nobody will be able to mess with this administration.

Plenty of moths showed up, but janitors howled about the buggy mess.

Inconspicuous early spring flowers are followed by clusters of pea-size yellow or red fruit that can make a mess on pavement.

Your living room is a chaotic mess of electronic components and soft drink bottles.

Let's not beat this dead, decaying, stinky mess of a horse.

The mess in the boardroom reflects the mess on the ground.

In which case he'd be obligated, as my official keeper, to try to extricate me from the mess.

Why mess with a good thing and it sticks the real name right in the face of all of those who totally misunderstand science.

And this mess goes much deeper than student loan refinance, even with all the individual trauma that entails.

One feels oddly humbled in the presence of such mess.

It's is a great way to introduce kids to chemical reactions in physical science, yet keep the mess outside.

It is wrong for the purpose of which he used it for to mess with the elements.

Some people look at the sheer amount of material and see a mess.

The junta, quickly making a mess of governing, allowed an election.

There was a time when you could mess up on the east coast and go to the west coast and start over again.

The best way to give you an idea of the whole complicated mess is to describe the process.

He was fairly absent-minded and so knew he had to keep up with things on a constant basis or lose it all to the mess.

It is likely to be a vain exercise: unnecessary if the downturn is mild, but insufficient to deal with a truly dire mess.

Starch is a mean and weird teacher who you don't want to mess around with.

But that doesn't mean the little guy isn't in a mess of controversy and courtroom drama.

Plus, she was able to make notes in her notes, without making a big mess.

The more important difference, though, is how each country got into its mess and then responded to it.

Up until then, the conventional wisdom was that if you mess around with a virus genetically, it will always make it weaker.

The only way out of the mess is to invest our way into the future.

They're a pain to order, a mess to keep track of, and a.

Loosen it up there and mess with it above your instep where you pull it snug when you put them on.

But it has yet to make quite such a mess of their bonds, even those priced in their own currencies.

Still, it didn't seem right to leave whoever she was lying naked on the floor in a mess of rags.

The poor bird was apparently aggressive and a greasy, nasty, mess when cooked.

It might mess with email clients or other local services as well.

Students will try to fit a complex argument into one sentence, which reults in a run-on, paragraph-long mess.

It is also easy to see why the firms got into such a mess.

The mess tent features a professional gas range, full refrigeration, and an ice machine.

The idea didn't pan out but did get people thinking about how the forces mess with one another.

All it takes is one hot day to turn your lipstick into a sticky mess.

Japan stalled for a decade because it took years to recognise the scale of its mess.

When you discover a mess of bones, it forces you to imagine what happened the day these people died.

It's cool looking but fingers make a mess of a computer screen pretty quickly.

The camera and music apps are fun to mess around with, but not worth the purchase price on their own.

Knowing which foods can go in the compost pile is the key to creating a useful mulch instead of a hot mess.

We cannot afford to have an elected official be allowed to mess things up for years before a change is made.

Suddenly he discovered his pants were a sticky mess.

None of us can change that, and it's actually good that none of us can change that because we'd likely make a mess of it.

Don't mess around with any of this cap-and-trade shenanigans.

Mostly it's a chance to mess around with dangerous stuff and see if he can produce some cool effects.

If not, then the telescope itself will generate air turbulence that will mess up the view.

In any case they surely have a mess on their hands.

Watchmen is a beat-'em-up game in which the object is to pummel a succession of near-identical foes into a bloody mess.

India can get itself out of the mess it made for itself, but it will take time and dedication.

What a mess a failed marriage can create, and if children are involved they are dragged into without a say.

Forget cow tipping-next time you want to mess with a bovine friend, try waving a magnet in its face.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

mess (mɛs)

—n
1.	a state of confusion or untidiness, esp if dirty or unpleasant: the house was in a mess
2.	a chaotic or troublesome state of affairs; muddle: his life was a mess
3.	informal a dirty or untidy person or thing
4.	archaic a portion of food, esp soft or semiliquid food
5.	a place where service personnel eat or take recreation: an officers' mess
6.	a group of people, usually servicemen, who eat together
7.	the meal so taken
8.	mess of pottage a material gain involving the sacrifice of a higher value

—vb (often foll by up) (often foll by with)
9.	to muddle or dirty
10.	(intr) to make a mess
11.	to interfere; meddle
12.	(intr; often foll by with or together) military to group together, esp for eating

[C13: from Old French mes dish of food, from Late Latin missus course (at table), from Latin mittere to send forth, set out]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

mess

c.1300, "food for one meal, pottage," from O.Fr. mes "portion of food, course at dinner," from L.L. missus "course at dinner," lit. "placing, putting (on a table, etc.)," from mittere "to put, place," from L. mittere "to send, let go" (see mission). Sense of "mixed food"

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led to contemptuous use for "jumble, mixed mass" (1828), and figurative sense of "state of confusion" (1834), as well as "condition of untidiness" (1851). Meaning "communal eating place"(esp. a military one) is first attested 1530s, from earlier sense of "company of persons eating together" (early 15c.), originally a group of four. To mess with "interfere, get involved" is from 1903; mess up "make a mistake, get in trouble" is from 1933, both originally Amer.Eng. colloquial.

COLLAPSE

Slang Dictionary

mess definition

n.
a hopeless, stupid person. : The guy's a mess!
n.
dung. (Usually with a.) : There's a mess in Jimmy's diapers, Mom.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Easton

Bible Dictionary