untidy state
1 [C,usually sing.] a dirty or untidy state:
The room was in a mess. * The kids made a mess in the bathroom. * ' What a mess!' she said, surveying the scene after the party. * My hair's a real mess!
difficult situation
2 [C,usually sing.] a situation that is full of problems, usually because of a lack of organization or because of mistakes that sb has made:
The economy is in a mess. * I feel I've made a mess of things. * The whole situation is a mess. * Let's try to sort out the mess. * The biggest question is how they got into this mess in the first place. * (ironic) That's another fine mess you've got us into.
untidy person
3 [sing.] a person who is dirty or whose clothes and hair are not tidy:
You're a mess!
animal waste
4 [U,C] (informal) the EXCREMENT (= solid waste matter) of an animal, usually a dog or cat
a lot
5 a ~ of sth (AmE, informal) a lot of sth:
There's a mess of fish down there, so get your lines in the water.
armed forces
6 (also mess hall especially in AmE) a building or room in which members of the armed forces have their meals:
the officers' mess
Part of speech: verb
make untidy
1 [VN] (informal, especially AmE) to make sth dirty or untidy:
Careful-you're messing my hair.
of an animal
2 [V] to empty its bowels somewhere that it should not
IDIOMS
no messing (spoken) used to say that sth has been done easily:
We finished in time, no messing.
PHRASALVERBS
mess around (BrE also mess about)
1 to behave in a silly and annoying way, especially instead of doing sth useful
SYNFOOLAROUND:
Will you stop messing around and get on with some work? * I messed around in my first year at college.
2 to spend time doing sth for pleasure in a relaxed way:
We spent the day messing around on the river.
mess around with sb (BrE also mess about with sb) to have a sexual relationship with sb, especially when you should not
mess around with sth (BrE also mess about with sth)
1 to touch or use sth in a careless and/or annoying way:
Who's been messing around with my computer?
2 to spend time playing with sth, repairing sth, etc.
mess sb about / around (BrE) to treat sb in an unfair and annoying way, especially by changing your mind a lot or not doing what you said you would:
I'm sorry to mess you about but there are a few last-minute changes.
mess up
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for mess is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is mess a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, mess is tagged as noun.
Does mess appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — mess appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
