messy
/ˈmɛsi
/adjective (messier, messiest)
1Untidy or dirty: his messy hair...
- He has the same almond eyes, the same thin face, the same messy dirty blonde hair, everything.
- She was met face to face with a guy who had thick messy dirty blonde hair and blue eyes that sparkled with laughter.
- Rushing to get dress and to pack her things Rebecca race out the door with messy hair and untidy clothing.
Synonyms
dirty, filthy, grubby, soiled, grimy, begrimed;
mucky, muddy, slimy, sticky, sullied, spotted, stained, smeared, smudged, tarnished;
dishevelled, blowsy, scruffy, rumpled, matted, unkempt, tousled, bedraggled, tangled, slapdash, slovenly
informal yucky
British informal gungy
disorderly, disordered, muddled, in a muddle, chaotic, confused, disorganized, in disarray, in turmoil, disarranged;
untidy, cluttered, littered, in a jumble, jumbled
informal like a bomb's hit it
British informal shambolic
1.1Generating or involving mess: stripping wallpaper can be a messy, time-consuming job...
- Moreover, a rodent capture still leaves behind the messy job of killing the creature and burying the evidence.
- I am tackling a fairly big, unrewarding and messy job this weekend: moving the compost bin in my garden down to my allotment.
- By definition, it's a messy job for the sorters, and anything in a plastic bag goes straight to landfill.
2(Of a situation) confused and difficult to deal with: a messy divorce...
- It's a messy situation that needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis, but I think it was right not to automatically inform the parent.
- If I made a mistake, picked the wrong guy or ended up in a messy situation, then I dealt with it.
- A source said the time: The situation is really messy with Pearl and Gavin refusing to talk.
Synonyms
chaotic, convoluted, complex, intricate, tangled, tortuous, confused, confusing, difficult;
unpleasant, nasty, bitter, acrimonious, spiteful
Derivatives
messily
/ adverb ...- In order for any such dispute to conclude, there has got to be a resolution of a contest between those who speak for the neatly ideal and those who speak for the messily real.
- It was the same way she used to fill in coloring books: quickly, messily, veering out of the lines.
- But by the time it actually hit the screen in the autumn, the new media bubble had burst as messily as an over-inflated squirrel.
messiness
/ noun ...- Despite the messiness inherent in natural systems, evolution has produced ‘machines of extreme perfection,’ to use Darwin's felicitous phrase.
- She has reporters eating out of her hand - at a pre-Olympic press conference she admitted her biggest vice was messiness, adding ‘you should see my bedroom’.
- Its very casualness, its unfinishedness and downbeat messiness give the affair the feeling of real life, which by a further paradox makes it more engaging than something more obviously dramatic.