hot messn.
/ˌhɒt ˈmɛs/, U.S. /ˌhɑt ˈmɛs/ 1. A warm meal, esp. one served to a group. Now chiefly historical.
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1818 J. Walker Lett. W. Indies 65 The cooking of a nourishing hot mess every day for the young and the sick, is an indispensable part of every well regulated plantation.
1861 Standard 4 Apr. 6/4 The canteen consisted of two parts, the bottom part having a folding handle, which enabled the owner to receive his hot mess from the pontoon kettle without injury to his fingers.
1948 Sun (Baltimore) 22 Aug. 24/5 They found kitchens already set up ready for a hot mess at noon.
1959 P. O'Brian Unknown Shore ix. 183 The cook..had somehow managed to give the midshipmen's berth a hot mess of beef and beans.
2. figurative and in figurative contexts.
a. An uncomfortable, difficult, or challenging situation or state of affairs. Chiefly in in (also into) a hot mess. Now rare.Cf. mess n.1 3a, hot water n. 1b.
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the world > action or operation > difficulty > [noun] > difficult state of things
hard casec1325
box1546
pass1560
little-ease1589
a fine kettle1741
mess1812
how-do-you-do1835
hot mess1867
bed of nails1872
shitter1958
strife1963
1867 Blackburn Standard 20 Mar. He had been in these ‘rows’ before. He remembered, on one occasion getting his fingers into a very hot mess with Father Sharples.
1907 Pall Mall Mag. Apr. 394/2 Now, ef I says the word, yo'll be in a hot mess in about one minute! 'Mounters' ain't 'lowed in 'yar, not lonesome ones, anyway!
1954 Odessa (Texas) American 8 Feb. 2/7 The fire of passion has tossed [him]..into a pretty hot mess.
2012 K. Oakes Radical Reinvention i. 21 The narrative of a person finding faith in a crisis is a very old one. Even Paul, on the road to Damascus, was in a hot mess.
b. slang (chiefly U.S.). Something or someone in extreme confusion or disorder.rare before late 20th cent.
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1899 Monthly Jrnl. Internat. Assoc. Machinists Apr. 195/1 Verily, I say unto you, the public is a hot mess.
1989 B. Anderson I think we should go into Jungle (1993) 38 Nothing was to scale. The Christ Child lay big as a shepherd,..a tiger smaller than a lamb... I thought it a mess, and a hot mess.
1995 Altoona (Pa.) Mirror 13 May b1/1 So if you're 20 pounds overweight,..drift from job to job, and your life is a big hot mess, you know who to blame.
2008 Buffalo (N.Y.) (Nexis) 25 Apr. g14 The sordid life and times of Judy Garland, the original hot mess.
2012 B. Masters Noughties (2013) 172 A hot mess of check, Burberry, tartan, and dayglo.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2015; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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n.1818