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OneKitly

messy

adjectivecommon in dialogue

  • //ˈmɛsi//

In a disorderly state; chaotic; disorderly.

adjective

  1. 1

    In a disorderly state; chaotic; disorderly.

    a messy office

    Jim ran his fingers through his messy brown hair.

    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. 2

    Prone to causing mess.

    He is the messiest person I've ever met.

  3. 3

    Difficult or unpleasant to deal with.

    a messy divorce

    Say bonjour to the botched R.S.V.P. The practice of replying to invitations, let alone actually showing up to parties as promised, has become as antiquated as the chimney sweep, and much messier.

  4. 4

    Argumentative, spreading spreading gossip, talking behind someone's back

    They keep starting fights with Sam, they're so messy.

Etymology

Etymology tree English mess Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English messy From mess + -y.

Forms

comparative
messier
superlative
messiest
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).