Other forms: messes
A mess is when things are everywhere and nothing is in its place. What a mess, clear up the mess, the room is a mess.
It also means a confused or bad situation: the whole thing is a mess, made a mess of it. In the armed forces, the mess is where personnel eat: the officers' mess — which is the older sense and where the food meaning came from. Note mess about, meaning to waste time or behave foolishly; mess with, meaning to interfere; and messy, which describes both a room and a divorce.
1nounmessA state where nothing is in its place.
“Your bedroom is a mess, so please tidy it before dinner.”
2nounconfusedA confused or bad situation.
“The company's finances are in a real mess after years of bad decisions.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
mess is disorder, or a dining group.
Old French mes meant a dish of food, from Latin missus, a course sent to the table. A mess was a portion, then a group who ate together, then mixed food, and finally disorder — one word sliding from dinner to chaos.
Middle English
mesh — mash
English, today
mess
Perhaps a corruption of Middle English mesh (“mash”), compare muss, or derived from Etymology 2 "mixed foods, as for animals". Compare also Old English mes (“dung, excrement”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA