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say it: mes
mess is a noun and verb meaning "a state of confusion and disorderliness". It is pronounced /ˈmɛs/ — mes. It carries 8 recorded senses.
a state of confusion and disorderliness
“the house was a mess”
“she smoothed the mussiness of the bed”
informal terms for a difficult situation
“he got into a terrible fix”
“he made a muddle of his marriage”
a meal eaten in a mess hall by service personnel
a (large) military dining room where service personnel eat or relax
military
(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”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for mess come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.