messy

From mess +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛsi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛsi
• Hyphenation: messy
• Homophone: Messi

messy (comparative messier, superlative messiest)

1. (of a place, situation, person, etc) In a disorderly state; chaotic; disorderly.

   a messy office

   Jim ran his fingers through his messy brown hair.

   • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory.

2. (of a person) Prone to causing mess.

   He is the messiest person I've ever met.

3. (of a situation) Difficult or unpleasant to deal with.

   a messy divorce

(in a disorderly state): untidy, chaotic, disorderly, cluttered

• neat
• orderly

• messily
• messiness
• wet and messy, wet and messy fetishism

• → German: Messie

• “messy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “messy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Symes

messy

1. Alternative form of messe