What does mess mean?
Definitions for mess
mɛsmess
This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word mess.
Princeton's WordNet
mess, messiness, muss, mussinessnoun
a state of confusion and disorderliness
"the house was a mess"; "she smoothed the mussiness of the bed"
fix, hole, jam, mess, muddle, pickle, kettle of fishnoun
informal terms for a difficult situation
"he got into a terrible fix"; "he made a muddle of his marriage"
messnoun
soft semiliquid food
"a mess of porridge"
messnoun
a meal eaten in a mess hall by service personnel
mess, mess hallnoun
a (large) military dining room where service personnel eat or relax
batch, deal, flock, good deal, great deal, hatful, heap, lot, mass, mess, mickle, mint, mountain, muckle, passel, peck, pile, plenty, pot, quite a little, raft, sight, slew, spate, stack, tidy sum, wadverb
(often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent
"a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "see the rest of the winners in our huge passel of photos"; "it must have cost plenty"; "a slew of journalists"; "a wad of money"
messverb
eat in a mess hall
mess, mess upverb
make a mess of or create disorder in
"He messed up his room"
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
Messnoun
A dish; a quantity of food sent to table together.
Etymology: mes, old French; messo, Italian; missus, Latin; mes, Gothick; mese , Saxon, a dish.
The bounteous huswife, nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens.Now your traveller,
He and his toothpick at my worship’s mess. William Shakespeare.I had as lief you should tell me of a mess of porridge. William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor.
Herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses. John Milton.Had either of the crimes been cooked to their palates, they might have changed messes. Decay of Piety.
From him he next receives it thick or thin,
As pure a mess almost as it came in. Alexander Pope.To Messverb
To eat; to feed.
Wikipedia
MESS
Multi Emulator Super System (MESS) is an emulator for various consoles and computer systems, based on the MAME core. It used to be a standalone program (which has since been discontinued), but is now integrated into MAME (which is actively developed). MESS emulates portable and console gaming systems, computer platforms, and calculators. The project strives for accuracy and portability and therefore is not always the fastest emulator for any one particular system. Its accuracy makes it also useful for homebrew game development.As of April 2015 MESS supported 994 unique systems with 2,106 total system variations. However, not all of the systems in MESS are functional; some are marked as non-working or are in development. MESS was first released in 1998 and has been under constant development since. MAME and MESS were once separate applications, but were later developed and released together from a single source repository. MAMEDEV member David Haywood maintained and distributed UME (Universal Machine Emulator) which combined much of the functionality of MAME and MESS in a single application. On May 27, 2015, MESS was formally integrated with MAME and became a part of MAME.
ChatGPT
mess
A mess is a situation, place, or thing that is disordered, untidy, chaotic, or out of control. It can also refer to something that involves complications, difficulties, or problems. In other cases, it can denote a portion of soft or semi-liquid food. Additionally, it can also mean a group of people, typically soldiers or sailors, who regularly eat meals together.
Webster Dictionary
Messnoun
mass; church service
Messnoun
a quantity of food set on a table at one time; provision of food for a person or party for one meal; as, a mess of pottage; also, the food given to a beast at one time
Messnoun
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; as, the wardroom mess
Messnoun
a set of four; -- from the old practice of dividing companies into sets of four at dinner
Messnoun
the milk given by a cow at one milking
Messnoun
a disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; hence, a situation resulting from blundering or from misunderstanding; as, he made a mess of it
Messverb
to take meals with a mess; to belong to a mess; to eat (with others); as, I mess with the wardroom officers
Messverb
to supply with a mess
Etymology: [OE. mes, OF. mets, LL. missum, p. p. of mittere to put, place (e. g., on the table), L. mittere to send. See Mission, and cf. Mass religious service.]
Wikidata
Mess
A mess is the place where military personnel socialise, eat, and live. In some societies this military usage has extended to other disciplined services eateries such as civilian fire fighting and police forces. The root of mess is the Old French mes, "portion of food", drawn from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send" and "to put", the original sense being "a course of a meal put on the table". This sense of mess, which appeared in English in the 13th century, was often used for cooked or liquid dishes in particular, as in the "mess of pottage". By the 15th century, a group of people who ate together was also called a mess, and it is this sense that persists in the "mess halls" of the modern military.
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
Mess
mes, n. a mixture disagreeable to the sight or taste: a medley: disorder: confusion.—v.t. to make a mess of: to muddle.—adj. Mess′y, confused, untidy. [A form of mash.]
Mess
mes, n. a dish or quantity of food served up at one time: a number of persons who take their meals together at the same table, esp. in the army and navy: the take of fish at one time.—v.t. to supply with a mess.—v.i. to eat of a mess: to eat at a common table. [O. Fr. mes (Fr. mets), a dish—L. mittĕre, missum, to send, in Low L. to place.]
Mess
mes, n.=mass.—Mess John, a domestic chaplain.
Dictionary of Nautical Terms
mess
Any company of the officers or crew of a ship, who eat, drink, and associate together. (See NUMBER.) Also, the state of a ship in a sudden squall, when everything is let go and flying, and nothing hauled in.
Military Dictionary and Gazetteer
mess
The law is silent with regard to messes in the army. Executive regulations have been made on the subject, but without law it is impossible to put messes on a proper footing. In England, an allowance is granted by the sovereign in aid of the expense of officers’ messes; and every officer on appointment to a corps subscribes one month’s pay to the mess-fund. All the officers of the corps mess together. (See Guard Mess.) In France, the several grades mess separately; lieutenants and sub-lieutenants forming two tables, captains another, and field-officers of different grades generally eating separately also. Generals and colonels of the French service receive an allowance for table expenses, not sufficient to keep open house, but enough to enable them to entertain guests. In the British navy there are generally three messes, namely, the ward-room mess, the gun-room mess, and the engineers’ mess; in the U. S. navy there are two: the ward-room and steerage messes. Enlisted soldiers and seamen, in the army and navy respectively, mess together in tables comprising a certain number, according to squads or rating; but this has no reference to the technical meaning of messing as applied to officers, and is merely for the purpose of economy of fuel and labor in the cooking of their rations.
Suggested Resources
MESS
What does MESS stand for? -- Explore the various meanings for the MESS acronym on the Abbreviations.com website.
Surnames Frequency by Census Records
MESS
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Mess is ranked #35945 in terms of the most common surnames in America.
The Mess surname appeared 624 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 would have the surname Mess.
95.5% or 596 total occurrences were White.
1.7% or 11 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
1.6% or 10 total occurrences were Black.
0.8% or 5 total occurrences were Asian.
Matched Categories
British National Corpus
Written Corpus Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'mess' in Written Corpus Frequency: #1869
Nouns Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'mess' in Nouns Frequency: #1805
Numerology
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of mess in Chaldean Numerology is: 6
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of mess in Pythagorean Numerology is: 2
Examples of mess in a Sentence
If he didn't do it, what would this mess look like?
Department of Corrections needs a complete overhaul. I think people of all mentalities and people of all stripes and persuasions agree that Rikers is a mess, and when you have up to a third of corrections officers not showing up to work and leaving the inmates basically to run the jail and letting the worst that those inmates were usually the gang-affiliated inmates who reigned supreme, you're going to have violence and chaos.
They play, they mess around, they seem to be pretty resilient, pretty versatile, flexible.
And it was if our lives collided in an unbelievable exquisite mess.
The government should be held accountable for the mess it's made and offer detailed rationales for why they deemed this parent inappropriate to release to, i do not trust this government to make that decision correctly.
Popularity rank by frequency of use
References
Translations for mess
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- تعبثArabic
- garbuixCatalan, Valencian
- nepořádekCzech
- annibendodWelsh
- rod, messeDanish
- Messe, DurcheinanderGerman
- kaĉoEsperanto
- desorden, leoneraSpanish
- بهم ریختگیPersian
- bordel, foutoir, gâchis, chenis, fouillis, messeFrench
- összevisszaság, zűrzavar, rendetlenségHungarian
- անկարգություն, խառնաշփոթArmenian
- kekacauanIndonesian
- sconquasso, messa, casino, percorso ad ostacoli, confusione, macello, rovinaItalian
- 混乱Japanese
- უწესრიგობა, უსიამოვნებაGeorgian
- ಅವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆKannada
- pōwhiwhiMāori
- mis, dienst, puinhoop, zootje, gebedsdienstDutch
- bagunça, missaPortuguese
- ме́сиво, ме́сса, беспоря́док, пу́таница, барда́кRussian
- röra, mässaSwedish
- ความสับสนThai
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